Three people's hands playing cards on a wood table

Hand and Foot, a version of Canasta, is a card game in which players must play through two piles of 11 cards (their hand and foot) by making ends to get the highest number of points over the course of three rounds. While Canasta is a game Allison enjoyed growing up, she learned to play Hand & Foot over the past year and has enjoyed playing it with family and friends since. Although many people play the game with decks of standard Bicycle playing cards, Allison began creating designs for a custom set of cards for the game.

Yellow tracing paper with sketches of hands and feet on them
Sketchbook featuring logo concept sketches
Sketches of hand and foot card back layouts

Sketching components for the card fronts and backs

Woman holding cards over black table with a box, stickers, tape dispenser, and paper on it
Box of cards, notepad, stickers, and game rules on black table

Prototyping the game sets

After designing the custom card fronts and backs, Nüpolitan decided to build out the cards as part of a game set and launch a Kickstarter campaign to produce the game and get it into the hands of people who love to play. The game set included a custom notepad, rigid game box, and stickers as well as instructions for game play and a mini, erasable pencil.

The full game included 216 custom-designed cards printed on high-quality 310gsm casino paper card stock with a linen finish, making them durable and easy to handle.

Animation of card flipping over from back to front

A teaser of the cards made for Instagram

Box of cards, round black and red stickers, red notepad, game rules, and mini black pencil on orange background

Jokers and 2s, which act as wild cards, are printed full color to make them stand out amongst the crowd. Kings, Queens, and Jacks were built with elements of their respective suits, creating unique and playful profiles.

Dark gray backs of cards and a stack of aces face-up on an orange background
A dark gray card, ace of clubs face-up, and red joker face-up on an orange background
Kings, queens, and jacks laying face-up in a grid on an orange background
Animation of club becoming the King's beard on a close-up of the king of clubs card
Animation of a heart becoming the queen's chin on a close-up of the king of hearts card

To promote the game and campaign, we created videos further explaining the points system and rules for gameplay as well as a series of ads for social media.

Animation of paper flower opening up and becoming gift certificate
Animation of gift certificate scooting into an envelope and the envelope closing with a heart-shaped sticker

Ads promoting the game as a gift idea for Mothers' Day.

Gray back of card with white text on red background in ad for social media
Red playing card reading 2 weeks left
Red playing card reading one week remaining
White playing card reading 3 days to go!
Gray playing card reading 2 days to go
Red playing card reading one day left to buy
White playing card reading Last Day!

A countdown to the end of the campaign.

Although the campaign’s funding was unsuccessful, the project offered a lot of insight into the knowledge needed to accurately price and manufacture a high-quality game and offered a fun, creative outlet!

Two women and one man playing cards on a wood table with a lit tree in the background

Enjoying a fun game of Hand & Foot with friends.