Butlers - Playing Cards Design

Tree Trumps

G A Butler & Sons asked us to design a branded set of playing cards. Not a promotional deck with a logo on the back — a proper top trumps game built around their own machinery.

Butlers are a longstanding client, so we already knew the brand guidelines and the business. The unfamiliar part was the format. A deck of cards has rules a brochure doesn’t: every card has to carry the same information in the same place, the numbers have to be balanced enough that the game is worth playing, and it all has to hold together as an object people want to pick up.

Starting with the game, not the graphics

We began by gathering the raw material — the game rules and information, and photographs of the arborist machinery Butlers actually run.

The categories came out of the equipment itself. Max height, power, agility, treetop factor, use frequency, weight. Two of those are recognisable spec-sheet metrics. The others are the ones that make it a game — and “treetop factor” is exactly the sort of category a client in this sector will enjoy arguing about.

Each card carries a fact file explaining what the machine actually does, so the deck teaches while it plays. Someone leafing through learns why a compact loader with a tight turning radius matters on a narrow access job.

A deck built for the hand

The finished set runs to 35 unique cards. Every one follows the same layout: machine name in a banner along the top, photograph below, fact file, then the stats block. Consistency is what makes a trumps deck playable — a player needs to find the same number in the same place every time without hunting for it.

Butlers’ dark green from the brand guidelines does the heavy lifting. We introduced an orange alongside it, which gives the deck energy and, more practically, makes the numbers jump off a dark background at a glance.

We also drew a branded pattern from the leaf mark in Butlers’ identity, used across the card backs and the box. It ties the set together and gives the packaging a finish that stops it feeling like a printed novelty.

Print with a purpose

Branded merchandise usually ends up in a drawer. A game doesn’t. This deck gets handled, argued over, and left out on a table — which is a considerably better outcome for a client’s brand than a mug.

What we delivered:

• Playing card design — 35 unique cards
• Custom branded pattern
• Packaging design
• Print-ready artwork