Behind the scenes:

Creating the Heroku Hanafuda cards

Heroku is made up of a diverse team of people from all over the world. Our core brand exemplifies clarity, balance, and craft, so we created a deck of playing cards celebrating those values. When we decided that it was time to revisit the project, we initially explored updating the deck with a new design, but it felt too similar, like we were treading old ground. That really didn’t sit well with us. We wanted to do something new.

We began to explore, looking at different examples of card-based games. Through one of our team members we learned of Hanafuda, or “flower cards”, a gorgeous and fun Japanese card game made up of twelve suits that represent the months of the year, each with a designated flower. We could imagine nothing more perfect than bringing the unique Heroku design aesthetic to it.

We took tremendous care in looking at all the details to ensure that we remained true to the culture and heritage of the cards, while creating a deck that we could be proud of.