As indicated by the title “butterfly effect,” I wanted to explore the fluctuant, unpredictable nature of gameplay through the butterfly’s representation of transformation and freedom. Preserving the barest of identifying essentials for each of the 52 cards, I reimagined them through many experimentations with postive and negative space.
sole designer
timeline: 2 weeks
tools: Adobe Illustrator
In a typical deck of cards, the identifying factor for a card at a glance is the middle, and then the corners that tell you the suit and the number/face. In this design, I struggled initially with making my cards easy to identify quickly without complex illustrations. I played with several different ways to lay out the suits, but ultimately decided to create a checkerboard pattern with the butterfly silhouette.
Each corner of the card represents a different suit. This, and by putting the cards' numbers large and center, it is still easy to quickly identify the card despite the minimalism. As depicted above, I originally considered illustrating an intricate pattern on the back to represent the wings of a lacewing butterfly (which I referenced for the butterfly silhouette), but chose a simpler design to match the aesthetics of the card fronts.
I started this project for a school assignment, so I did not look into manufacturing the cards. Instead, I printed out the packaging and the decks onto Bristol paper, and cut them out by hand.
Several months after the original Butterfly Effect was printed and cut, I decided to revisit it because I wasn’t quite satisfied with my packaging design.
This revised version is far more dynamic, as the sides of the box were not designed in isolation. The usage of the suits on the wings on the side pays an homage to the style of the cards themselves, and its overall far more cohesive as a set. I still printed out the packaging on Bristol paper, and it uses the same butterfly pattern on the inside of the box.
