The Ephemeroi
The Ephemeroi is a set of 40 cards that can be used to play hanafuda games, make card divinations, construct modular artworks, and tell prompt-based stories, all in one deck.
A Cruel Designer's Thesis
At my college, senior graphic design students create a design project for their thesis classes based on a word as a theme. The word? “Ephemeral”.
My project was not simply about the object—the deck itself—but sharing the fleeting experience of getting friends together for game night and letting the burdens of life fall away for a few hours.
Concept and Design
As a lifelong gamer and fantasy enthusiast, card games and tarot have always enchanted me. Not just the playing of them, but how and why people play; the language of them.
I began by researching symbols based on the theme of ephemerality, such as fire and flowers, for each suit.
Each suit has a unique color, visual motif, and geometric shapes that help to indicate the number.
For example, the card showcased is the four of pomes (fancy name, I know. I like my fancy names).
About The Ephemeroi
40 cards (10 suits of 4)
Unique fronts and backs
Modular hand-drawn art
A custom tuck box
Enclosed how-to-play booklet
Sakura/Koi-Koi
Card Divination
Storytelling Prompts
Adobe Illustrator
Procreate
Looking Back...
As a fantasy nut and designer (designers love their symbols), the aspect of writing and researching symbolism was quite easy and fun.
But as an illustrator, I quite underestimated the amount of work that needed to go into sketching, inking, coloring, and editing 40 unique cards.
By far, this was the phase that took up the most time in this project.
Partway through sketching, I realized that I needed to go with a simple, highly stylistic, monochrome style to make the artwork both eye-catching and feasible within the time frame of one or two months.
At the end of the day...
While most thesis projects are hung up on walls or placed on pedestals, the Ephemeroi was played on a table—and for the duration of a game, I like to think that we were not student and reviewer, but just a couple of humans having fun.