Determined to design a typographic deck of playing cards, I began the same way I always do: research. While exploring the history of playing cards, I came across the original “squeezer”—the small indices in the corners of standard playing cards, patented in 1864 to help players identify cards while keeping them tightly fanned. I knew immediately that these small-but-mighty numbers would become the focus of the project. By reducing the design to focus on these corner elements, Squeezers reveals how much (or little) of each card we actually need to recognize it. You'll find these cards easier to read in-hand than spread out—a subtle rethinking of a timeless design feature.
