Impressions Playing Cards

See our Kickstarter campaign here.

Impressions Playing Cards are designed by MakePlayingCards.com (MPC ®), a professional custom playing cards printing and manufacturing company. With the success on our first campaign of our first ever branded playing cards earlier on the year, we are now introducing a whole new concept to a deck of playing cards which you can touch, feel and admire as well as play.

Stealth Edition

Close-up on high gloss - Stealth Edition

Table spread

Ace of spades

In addition to the traits of a traditional deck of cards, Impressions playing cards gives you the added sense of touch on the artwork, brought to you using the latest in printing and secondary process technology which we have recently invested heavily in. We are using premium quality M32 casino grade card stock with a black core centre layer.

The Impressions Playing Cards range

Creating Impressions playing cards was by no means straight forward as the whole normal printing and production process of a traditional deck of cards had to be altered. Adding the special raised embossed gloss effect to the cards essentially increased the height of the deck so the cutting process had to be reconfigured. Also, the fact that we have applied this special layer on the surface top of each card meant that the finishing had to be completely changed so as to not lose the shine effect but keeping them true to their original purpose which is the playability aspect. We have had countless trials using different methods, materials and finishing which alone have lasted 3 months. We are now extremely happy to say that we have got it right.

The 3 decks (now 4 decks - 29 Sept.)

There are 2 main decks in this Kickstarter project. These are the Impressions Stealth Edition and the original Impressions deck. We also have an enlarge court cards special deck called the Impressions Court Edition.On 29th September, we released a new white deck called the Phantom Edition. This is the 4th deck to join the Impressions by MPC range.

Stealth Edition

Standard Edition

Court Edition

And the all new Phantom Ed. deck

Phantom Ed. tuck box

Aside from our in-house traditional offset printers, latest large-scale digital industrial printers, this year we at QP have also invested significantly on state of the art secondary process machines, one of which we are using on our Impressions playing cards. This new digital technology is able to apply embossed UV to images with pinpoint accuracy. Some of you may say this is traditional spot UV but they are distinctively different. First of all, no expensive setup is required i.e. there is no MOQ. Second of all, spot UV is almost flat whereas this is able to achieve up to 250 microns (braille effect) in polymer height which is 100 times higher than selective varnish. It can be looked as a mix between enhanced UV and digitized embossing. We can apply different densities ranging from 1-100% through the same pass which normal spot UV cannot achieve. In terms of the glossiness, it achieves 99GU which is the highest gloss possible for printed material. What does this mean? Well, it means that your selected areas of colors will stand out even more through this raised gloss effect and what's more, you can experience the touching of it. The results are astounding which you can see in the photos here.

We have applied this glossy raised effect onto the cards here in this project as well as onto the tuck boxes. What’s more, we have found a way to make the cards playable even after apply this secondary process which is a major breakthrough.

We took the traditional design for playing cards which is in the public domain, redrew the card faces completely making the design unique to the MPC brand. For the back, we also come up with a symmetrical design using a tree as the focal point since playing cards are essentially paper which originates from trees, hence the inspiration for the design.

Card back design

The MPC Impressions range

As mentioned above, there are 3 decks in this project. The original Impressions deck is the main deck with the glossy embossed effect applied to it. The Stealth Edition is a really special design using the color black and virko to create the stand out design. The Court Edition enlarges the artwork on the court cards which aside from the unique design, players can properly experience the look and the touch and feel of the polymer applied to the card faces. We love all three decks as these should be the first on the market using this kind of new technology.

Stealth Edition

Standard

Court Edition

The tuck boxes for this Kickstarter project is unique and limited to our Kickstarter backers in this project only. How? Well, we have especially printed "Kickstarter Edition" on the top flap of the boxes as shown below. We have applied varying levels of virko densities to different areas of the box. Basically the more polymer we apply to a specific area, the more raised and glossier it becomes. On top of this, if we reach funding of more than $10k, we will be adding our special gold foil seals to the boxes as an added mark of authenticity of a limited edition deck. These KS edition boxes will never be produced and released again so once they're gone, they're gone.

Tuck boxes - different density levels to different areas

Tuck box close-up

How do they handle? Can they bend?

Some people are curious as to how these cards handle and whether they can bend. Using my limited handling skills, I created 2 videos for you to analyze and to help answer your many questions. Enjoy!

$10,000: If we reach this funding goal, we will upgrade our tuck box seals to digital gold stamped foil. Beautiful!

Gold foil seals

Unveiling the Phantom Ed. deck

We have also added the all new Phantom Ed. deck which we released on the 20th day of our project. It's available as a add-on for $13.

Impressions Phantom Ed.

The 1st ever MPC chips give away to pledges of $35+

With the addition of another newly sought digital UV printing machine, we created the first ever MPC chips which we are going to give away in this project. As we have limited stock availability and to control the costs, if your total pledge amount including your add-ons is over $35 at the end of the project, we will include one of these MPC chips into your package as shown below. Very attractive!

MPC chips

Pledges breakdown

Add-ons price list

Stealth uncut sheet

Standard and Court Edition uncut sheets

Phantom Ed. Limited Ed. Uncut Sheet

As a special thank you to all our backers for backing us on this project, we will hopefully be able to include a gift for everyone. The gift will depend on the funding that we achieve here though and may come in the form of an item or a coupon.