Playing cards / Illustration, packaging, exhibition
Beak and Comb
A production-ready 54-card deck that crowns chickens as Kings, Queens and Jacks, drawn in red, gold and black with folk-inspired motifs, and carried through the tuck box and a gallery installation.
Gallery installation
The full deck on the wall, the box on the tableWall grid of all 54 cards · framed key art · hands-on display
Beak and Comb takes the most ordinary bird on the farm and gives it the court treatment. Every King, Queen and Jack is a chicken in full regalia, drawn with the same weight and symmetry as a traditional French-suited deck, so the cards feel familiar in the hand even when the faces are absurd.
The palette is deliberately narrow: one red, one gold, one black. That restraint keeps fifty-four cards reading as a single object, and it let the folk-inspired borders and pips carry across the tuck box and the brand marks without redrawing anything.
The deck was taken all the way to print and then into a gallery, where the full set hung as a grid beside the framed key art and a display table where visitors could handle the cards.
- 01
Illustration
52 court and pip cards plus two jokers, drawn as one system.
- 02
Packaging
Tuck box carrying the folk border, seal and back pattern.
- 03
Exhibition
Framed prints, a wall grid of the full deck and a hands-on display.
Next project
Hollis Brewery