Wednesday, May 28th 2014, Los Angeles, CA – The Dieline and Dan & Dave Industries are proud to announce DeckStarter, the world’s first dedicated funding platform for custom designed playing cards.
Playing cards will never look the same again.
What if the very best designers, the ones busy making album covers, movie posters, tattoos for celebrities, and rebranding Fortune 500s, designed a deck of playing cards?
The future of custom designed playing cards is DeckStarter.
DeckStarter (www.deckstarter.com) is a new company producing decks of playing cards unlike anything you’ve ever seen before and they have already partnered with two of the biggest names in design.
“It is our mission to create a new marketplace for luxury playing cards through collaborations with elite brands, famous artists and indie designers. We offer years of experience printing cards and promise the highest level of quality. Merging exceptional design, innovative packaging, and a brilliant marketing team, we can ensure our playing cards will be unlike anything you’ve ever seen and handled before.”
The greatest part about DeckStarter is that our next deck could be yours.
At heart, we are a funding platform for playing cards and offer the easiest way to get your dream deck of playing cards printed. We want to know, “What will your deck look like?”
“We asked two of our favorite designers, Aaron Draplin and Debbie Millman, to imagine their own deck. We’re excited to unveil those to you today.”
Aaron Draplin
Debbie Millman
During HOW Design Live, the largest design conference in the world, we debuted Aaron Draplin and Debbie Millman’s creations. Each of these decks are wildly different interpretations of a traditional deck, and show the range of possibilities for design, print and packaging.
“At How Design Live last month, we gifted nearly 3,000 designers these inspiringly creative decks. A handful of them remain, so we’ve made them available to the public for the next 10 days only. Get them now and also learn more about our platform and how to be a part of it.”
Visit the Deckstarter blog to read about our experience at HOW Design Live.
Why playing cards though?
Playing cards are the perfect artistic outlet, with 52 blank canvases for a designer to showcase their work. They’re a product everyone is familiar with, and they have so many uses: poker, magic, cardistry, castle building, throwing and collecting to name a few.
Recognizing the potential playing cards have, and the growing collector’s market for custom decks of cards, along with all the amazing success designer decks receive on Kickstarter, the team behind DeckStarter came up with a solution.
How it Works:
Anyone may submit a design for a deck of playing cards. DeckStarter will handpick which decks to feature on the website and set a funding goal. When the deck goes live, it has 30 days to reach its goal before being printed.
DeckStarter works with the designer on preparing their files for print and making sure everything will turn out perfectly. Beyond this, it’s a very hands-off experience for the designer. DeckStarter manages everything, from printing, marketing, distribution and beyond.
Unlike other crowd-funding platforms, the pledges on DeckStarter are actually pre-sales. If enough are sold in 30 days to reach the goal, DeckStarter will print them. From there, the designer can sit back, relax and collect a handsome royalty from sales every month. Not to mention they now have their very own deck of playing cards and a real product in the marketplace.
Not a designer? DeckStarter is still for you.
When a deck of playing cards is featured on DeckStarter, it needs backers. Backers are customers who support the overall success of a deck by pre-ordering until 100% of the goal is met. Only then will a backer be charged and does the deck get printed.
Magicpak™
Each deck of playing cards comes packaged inside a Magicpak™, a magical case for the cards that animates open and closed. Magicpak™ was designed and engineered exclusively for DeckStarter playing cards by Burgopak.
About The Dieline
Established in 2007, The Dieline is the brainchild of Andrew Gibbs, who sought daily inspiration while working as a packaging production artist. Noticing a void for package design inspiration on the web, he began to catalogue packaging by googling images or snapping pictures of packaging on shelf.
What began as a personal blog soon became a dedicated platform for the the package design industry and its practitioners, students and enthusiasts. Its purpose is to define and promote the world’s best package design, and provide a place where the package design community can review, critique and stay informed of the latest trends and projects being created in the field.
Within two years of its inception, The Dieline became the most visited website on package design in the world, capturing a readership spanning millions across hundreds of countries. Through its rapid growth, The Dieline has expanded beyond a website to include an annual design competition – The Dieline Awards – as well as an annual design conference – The Dieline Conference. The Dieline remains as the industry’s source for package design, ushering a new wave of designers and enthusiasts.
About Dan & Dave
Although known for their card tricks and pioneering the art of cardistry, Dan and Dave are leaders in the playing card industry. They have years of experience designing, printing and distributing playing cards all over the world, as well as contributing to the development of a collectors market for custom designed playing cards. Learn more at
About Debbie Millman
Debbie Millman is President of the design division at Sterling Brands. She has been there for 18 years and in that time she has worked on the redesign of over 200 global brands, including projects with P&G, Colgate, Nestle, Kraft and Pepsi.
Debbie is President Emeritus of AIGA, the largest professional association for design in the world. She is a contributing editor at Print Magazine and Co-Founder and Chair of the world’s first Masters in Branding Program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. In 2005, she began hosting, “Design Matters,” the first podcast about design on the Internet. In 2011, the show was awarded a Cooper Hewitt National Design Award.
She is the author of six books on design and branding. Last year, an exhibition of her visual essays debuted at the Chicago Design Museum. Learn more at www.debbiemillman.com
About Aaron Draplin
Located in the mighty Pacific Northwest, the Draplin Design Co. proudly rolls up its sleeves on a number of projects related to the Print, Identity, Illustration and Gocco Muscle categories. DDC makes stuff for Coal Headwear, Union Binding Co., Richmond Fontaine, Field Notes, Esquire, Nike, Wired, Timberline, Chunklet, Incase, Giro, Cobra Dogs, Burton Snowboards, Patagonia, Megafaun, Danava, Ford Motor Company, Woolrich and even the Obama Administration, if you can believe that.
DDC pride’s themselves on a high level of craftsmanship and quality that keeps them up late into the wet Portland night. Learn more at www.draplin.com
About Burgopak
DeckStarter’s innovative “Magic Pack” structural design was created by Burgopak, a packaging design company offering a full service creative service. From concept to production to delivery, Burgopak provides structural and graphic design, artwork services, dedicated project management and production. Learn more at www.burgopak.com
