Cooking Up Cards

Cracked playing cards show what’s really underneath the eggshell. In coming up with this idea, I asked myself, “What would eggs be like if they were people? What kind of clothes would a sunny-side-up egg wear? How would scrambled eggs act?” I based the character designs on the physical attributes of eggs as well as the personalities I imagined up. I utilized bright colors and hand-drawn typography to help the illustrations match the quirky concept. For example, the chef character on the Ace has an especially tall hat because the more recipes a chef knows, the taller a hat they have.

This was a three week project in Graphics 3. I utilized Adobe Illustrator and Procreate. We were asked to create 14 playing cards and manipulate the suit symbols. This was definitely a challenge, as I had never done character design before. With some creative thinking and great feedback from my peers and professors, Cracked was the result.

I worked on Peeled in Graphic Design Portfolio, a year after completing Cracked. I wanted to expand the Unwrapped playing card series with potato people. I gave the illustrations a more rustic texture and thought more thoroughly about the backstory behind the characters before drawing them.