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52 Shades of Greed

52 Shades of Greed
Fri, 9/7/2012

A group of illustrators have conceptualized a deck of playing cards, dubbed "52 Shades of Greed," that lambastes Wall Street executives and politicians for their roles in the financial crisis.

"52 Shades of Greed is a deck of playing cards bearing illustrations of the people and financial institutions whose lust for money took the rest of us for a ride toward economic collapse," said the Alternative Banking Group of Occupy Wall Street, which commissioned the project.

"I thought that my collaborator Daniel and I would do some face cards and combine those with a standard deck of numbered cards for a sweet little project," said Marc Scheff, the art director for 52 Shades of Greed. "Then he suggested bringing in more illustrators, so we made some calls. Within a few days, the project snowballed into a massive collaborative undertaking involving 28 artists from around the world. The deck grew to 56 cards - 52 in the deck plus 4 bonus - on an extremely tight deadline. The vision evolved into making a visually dynamic and coherent set of cards with text and illustrations that would give people a snapshot of who the players are in this casino we call the world financial system."

The creators are currently hosting a fundraiser for the project. They hope to cut 1,000 decks to distribute during Occupy Wall Street's one year anniversary on September 17.

See the full deck here.

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