WILD Playing Cards by AssoKappa

Created by Mattia Santangelo and designed by Angela Munteanu, from Varese in Italy, WILD Playing Cards is a unique, nature-themed deck featuring geometric-styled artwork. The deck is hand-illustrated and digitally colored, giving it an essence of something real - a distillation of reality. According to Mattia, "every element on the card back has meaning. In the background, you can see 'sacro monte' and 'campo dei fiori,' the Varese 'mountain,' and under it you can see the Varese Lake. My idea was to create something unique, so I tried to mix the artwork in a geometric style. I think that this is a perfect mix. Not too much geometry, leaving room for realistic details." On the design of the card backs, Mattia continued, "We put a lot of attention to details on this. We studied the body language of the wolf to design it in the correct position when he howls. I love the reflection of the moon on the surface of the lake... it is awesome! The perfection of nature is the theme of the deck, and that is how we came up with the name of the deck, WILD!" The face cards are standard to maintain familiarity. Hence the standard courts are updated with colors to match the color palette of the card backs. The custom Ace of Spades features a wolf foot imprint, and the Jokers are geometrics. This is a choice because the Jokers can be any cards, so they are undefined and they can change into something else. So, we decided not to give them any realistic part. They are looking in opposite directions, like in the Phoenix deck, because they are very pretty to see in the magic Sandwiches Effect. The WILD Deck is produced by AssoKappa Il Negozio, an Italian magic shop that has produced many decks.