Commissioned by Qatar Museums for their gift shop, 'Batta' is a unique playing card set, custom designed with costumes and cultural aspects of Qatar. - Concept, Art Direction, Research: Hessa Al-Ali Design, Illustration, Research: Aziza Iqbal -

Commissioned by Qatar Museums for their gift shop, 'Batta' is a unique playing card set, custom designed with costumes and cultural aspects of Qatar. - Concept, Art Direction, Research: Hessa Al-Ali Design, Illustration, Research: Aziza Iqbal -

CONCEPT

For this special card series, Hessa and I collaborated to reformat the traditional playing card suite – but with a distinctly Qatari flavour.

Each element in the design was researched painstakingly, many drafts created and finetuned to showcase details of Qatari dress and society. This includes the unique 'Al Muqanna3' (The Masked One) character card instead of the Joker, as Ahmed Mohammad Al Jaber, a local icon in Qatar due to his hobby for eccentrically decorated cars and bikes.