TYT Custom Playing Card Deck
Overview
As part of TYT Network’s holiday merchandise planning, the merch team proposed creating a custom 52-card playing deck featuring the network’s hosts. I collaborated with another designer to develop the concept and visual direction, then took the project from rough illustrations through final card artwork, card backs, and packaging.
The project combined illustration, merchandise design, and packaging into a cohesive visual system designed to feel both unmistakably TYT and recognizable as a traditional deck of playing cards.
Role: Graphic Designer
Collaborator: Carlos Godoy
Tools: Adobe Illustrator, Procreate
The Challenge
The brief was simply to create a standard deck of playing cards featuring TYT hosts on the face cards. The challenge was finding a way to incorporate the personalities and visual identity of the network without losing the familiar structure of a traditional playing card deck.
My collaborator and I began by developing ideas for how each host could be represented. The King, Queen, and Jack cards featured three of TYT’s primary hosts: Cenk Uygur, Ana Kasparian, and John Iadarola, with each suit showing a different illustration tied to that person’s interests, personality, or recurring references. Brett Erlich, the network’s resident funny guy, appeared on the Joker cards.
The project also needed to function as a practical merchandise product. We needed a consistent look that could be applied across dozens of cards while keeping the artwork visually varied, and the deck box needed to feel like a natural extension of the deck.
The Solution
Developing the Face Cards
My collaborator and I developed visual concepts for each host together, then pitched the ideas to the design team and manager. He created the initial pencil illustrations, which I refined into vector artwork, colored, and adapted into the final card layouts. Each host received four variations featuring personal references, such as Ana Kasparian’s dog Charlie, her favorite flower, and her “Salt Queen” nickname.
When my coworker was finished with the initial pencil sketches, I took them into Illustrator to clean them up and create vector line art, then colored them.
Each host received four distinct illustrations featuring details specific to their personality.
The Joker cards featuring Brett Erlich
Building a Cohesive System
I created a reusable card template with separate layers for the suits, allowing the artwork to be adapted efficiently while keeping the deck consistent. A limited palette of red, blue, yellow, and black gave the face cards a unified playing-card aesthetic while still allowing each illustration to feel distinct.
Four variations of the same host showing how the system adapts across suits.
Creating the Card Back
For the card backs and tuck box, I created a repeating pattern of hand-drawn TYT references, including the Dragon Squad logo, Mariguana the iguana, the Capitol building, and Cenk’s “Of Course!” catchphrase. I also redrew the existing Dragon Squad logo to match the hand-drawn style of the pattern. I carried the pattern onto the packaging to create a cohesive product from the cards through the box.
Hand-drawn TYT-themed doodles developed for the repeating pattern.
The completed repeating pattern applied to the card back.
Designing the Deck Box
The completed tuck-box dieline, carrying the card-back pattern and visual system onto the packaging.
The Outcome
The completed deck concept included custom face cards for TYT’s hosts, Joker cards, a branded card back, and a coordinating tuck box.
Although the project was ultimately placed on indefinite hold before production, the design established a complete visual system for the proposed merchandise product and demonstrated how TYT’s personality could be translated into a physical product beyond its usual digital and broadcast applications.
Proposed deck and packaging
Reflection
This project gave me an opportunity to approach merchandise design as a system rather than a collection of individual pieces. Every card needed to feel unique, but the deck still needed to read as one cohesive product.
It also reinforced the value of designing with efficiency in mind. Building reusable templates, separating variable elements into layers, and using established card graphics where appropriate allowed me to spend more time on the parts of the project that benefited most from custom design and illustration.
It was a great exercise in collaboration and remains my favorite collaborative effort to this day. The deck is truly a product of both of our work.