National Park Playing Cards

National Park

Bestselling love letter

Playing Cards

to the outdoors.

Bestselling love

letter to the

outdoors.

/ About the project

National Park Playing Cards started as a passion project and became a small business I still run today. What began as a tribute to U.S. national parks earned a place on the shelves of more than 200 stores nationwide, including REI and six national park visitor centers. I designed every part of it: the cards, the box, the brand, and the storefront. Then I funded it on Kickstarter, built the business around it, and pitched it to retailers myself.

/ INDUSTRY

Nature

/ SCOPE

Packaging, Product

/ Credits

Client: Self-Initiated Proposal; Founder, Designer, and Operator: Micah Hoang; Photography: Keaton Wong, Ethan Hosford

/ Year

2019

The Problem

Fifty-two cards. Fifty-two parks. I decided early that the deck should not just illustrate parks; it should encode them. The standard structure of suits and ranks had to carry two extra layers of meaning: region and visitation, without ever breaking as a deck you could actually play.

Minimal linework is used to depict the 52 most popular US National Parks. The face cards have filled in circles with negative space lines to distinguish them from the other cards.

The back of each card depicts natural elements, including the sunn, the moon, trees, mountains, and leaves.

The System

Each suit maps to a U.S. region: diamonds to the Southwest, spades to the Northwest, clubs to the East, and hearts to the South. Card values rank the parks by popularity, from aces for the most visited down to twos for the least visited.

The jokers depict two iconic North American animals: the American black bear and American elk.

Card Craft

Minimal linework depicts the 52 most popular U.S. national parks. The face cards use filled-in circles with negative-space lines to distinguish them from the other cards.

Minimal linework is used to depict the 52 most popular US National Parks. The face cards have filled in circles with negative space lines to distinguish them from the other cards.

The back of each card depicts natural elements, including the sunn, the moon, trees, mountains, and leaves.

The back of each card depicts natural elements, including the sun, moon, trees, mountains, and leaves.

Playability

The deck is engineered as a working deck, not a decorative object. The stock, finish, and registration are specified to a standard that lets the cards handle, fan, and spring well enough for card magic and sleight of hand, not just display.

Box Design

I specified silver foil pressed onto a matte uncoated box. Visitor center shelves are full of cheap, commercial decks, and I wanted this one to read as a keepsake the moment someone picks it up. The foiled National Park Service arrowhead, rendered in a retro line style, is the shelf cue that signals quality before anyone opens it.

In Retail

The cards reached more than 200 boutique retailers across 49 states, plus the visitor centers at Canyonlands, Arches, Saguaro, Mount Rainier, Shenandoah, and Zion. I placed every one of these accounts myself, cold emailing and cold calling buyers with no distributor or sales rep.

Building the Business

Driven by my love for the outdoors and U.S. national parks, I launched National Park Playing Cards in 2019 through a 30-day Kickstarter campaign that I designed, built, and ran myself. The goal was $2,500 to produce 500 decks. I raised $6,341, which let me print 1,000 decks and ship 300 to backers.

After the first run sold out, I built the direct-to-consumer business: a Shopify storefront I designed and built, plus Etsy and Amazon listings. Direct online sales were the primary revenue source in the early years. I partnered with a friend to run paid acquisition across Google, Meta, and TikTok while I owned the product, the storefront, and the brand.

As demand grew, I moved the business toward wholesale, which is where most of the revenue comes from today. I handled buyer outreach for every account myself. In 2022, REI brought the deck into its stores and told me that, at 18, I was the youngest vendor it had ever signed.