A passion project, custom illustrated playing card deck featuring threatened, near endangered, endangered, critical and extinct species. Fully funded through Kickstarter in September 2021.

The Deck

Protected Pack includes 54 creatures, some well known, others that don’t get enough notice. The variety of sea, plant, mammal, reptile, avian, and insect life was chosen somewhat randomly but an effort to keep a variety was top of mind. Face cards will feature a theme, like our Queen Cats, while other animals are shuffled throughout.

What is Bracks Collective?

Unlike many other programs, Chatham University’s Interdisciplinary Design master’s program is welcoming and collaborative. Where other programs might encourage competition amongst students, Chatham encouraged collaborative, constructive feedback in an infectiously inspiring environment. As Chatham grads, we missed this collaboration, feedback, and environment and created one of our own. While we weren’t all at Chatham at exactly the same time, we crossed paths and connected. Each with a different niche or speciality, unique style, and different experience to bring to our projects. And thus Bracks Collective was born

The members of Bracks Collective each have a unique design style, and a deck of cards seemed like the perfect way to combine our work into a cohesive project. When we decided to illustrate endangered species, each of us selected to draw the creatures that interested us most. We established some guidelines and a color palette to keep some consistency in the deck, but left much of the creativity up to each artist.