Een Kaartspel

Een Kaartspel (A pack of cards) is an extreme minimalistic deck of playing cards from a renowned Dutch graphic designer Robert van Rixtel. The only cards showing a suit sign are the Aces, all other cards showing the value of the card with text in Dutch. The court cards and jokers have very simple figures which denote the King (Heer), Queen (Vrouw) and Jack (Boer).
All the pip cards only have the value denoted by text in Dutch. For example, the 3 of clubs has the text drie & Klaver (3 & clubs). The background also indicates the suit. Dark pink is Hearts, light pink is Diamonds, dark grey is Spades and light grey is clubs. The larger the size of the text, the higher the value of the cards, except the name of the suit sign which gets smaller. Confused? Check out the picture below which I hope are self explanatory.
The back of the cards and the box are also minimalist with just a black background and red border with square corners.

The pack was published in about 1985 by Quixotic design, pointed by Carta Mundi in a print run 2500 packs. Each pack has 52 cards, 2 jokers and a descriptive card. They were quite expensive at the time, costing 19,5 guilders per pack. I don't think they had much of a following with card players and are now probably only in the hands of collectors or graphic designers.

Below: the Box

All cards shown are from the collection of Paul Symons ©