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IRAN ED. sTORY
iran & usa: A tale of love & war retold
The first time Iranians found about the United States was in the late 1800s through the Ottomans. Ottomas were amazed that Americans are paying them to “protect” their ships from the other side of Zamin (the Earth). Ottomans calling America “Leng-e Donya” to the Iranian Shahs. A word meaning “the other end “of the Earth. Convinced, Iranians should consider charging Americans for money somehow, the Shah asked the British Ambassador one day: “Is America Underground? How can we get to them?”. Less than 50 years since then, Oil was found in Iran. And the good gothic Midwest Americans came to the Iranians first.
Earlier then, around 1920s, the Persian colors, motifs & calligraphy techniques were very well known to the wester traders. The techniques were taught in Mogul India and Ottoman Türkiye who appreciated the Europeans growing taste in the paisleys and deep blue pigments before Iranians did themselves.
Afghan and Turkman territories, were the Big Game, & the Russians and the British were the hunters. The Tall Ships era were gone and the big steam-powered engines were about to take over. This is where the story of our cards – the Persian Playing Cards, begins.
Tale of two Persia, the commoners and the Shahs.
1842: First introduction of a camera and early photographic experiments in Tehran, Iran.
1811: Last Shah of Qajar, showing off jewelry, painter Mirza Baba, from National Museum of Iran, Tehran.
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years of obsessing over untold love story
What’s New
re-newed from the old
AKINAKA Series: origin Story
I feel I’ve been working on this print work for over ten years. I first saw the original prints of Iranian Playing Cards from 1950s on a reddit post. People were loving them, one comment was: someone should bring these back. And that sorta stuck with me.
A couple of weeks went by at my boring techie job, and I was still thinking about those cards. I finally, found a version from the 70s on eBay for $500. Different Aces, printed in Spain by the Queen of Iran. I scanned the 60 years old cards and started teaching myself Gimp on YouTube. Slowly, upgraded my toolset to Photoshop and later Gigapixel from Topaz for larger poster sizes. I was sorting out 1000s of files at some point, from my random research work, stored on old laptops. So, I taught myself digital archiving, thinking more clearly about good and bad design workflows and eventually started printing on shirts, posters and mugs. People loved the shirts! But I knew I wanted to do cards not shirts. To keep track of where I stand with my goals, I decided it is time to do a real print batch. Before Covid, the United States Playing Card Company was still not yet bought out and their sales team to my surprise replied to my request for a quote. That gave me a lot of confidence to move forward but then Covid happened. I thought, I teach myself more techniques instead and focus on a new design of my own since I was having more fun then.
Time went by very quickly but in 2025 I finally did it. The first order was put in with a contractor in Florida, through my work with USPCC and when I got the first batch in my hand it smelled like a new deck of cards, and that smell somehow immediately made me happy.
The first series is called AKINAKA. First version is IRAN, AKINAKA to honor the work of the Queen in late 50s to modernize the name of Iran from Persia to Iran. AKINAKA is the sword that later inspired Katana swords in Japan and to me it’s a deserving starting series for the inspired Persian Playing cards. We’ve V01 IRAN Ed. here for now and soon V03 BIHSTUN and V02, which was started earlier but finished later that V03, Vortex SHIELD. Speaking of swords & shields, there is a war going on in Iran. That did make me want to pause the project again but I feel it is now or never.
War or not, it is happening. It all started with a simple Reddit search for Persian playing cards in 2016. There were many card projects that focused on the west eastern motifs, fonts and colors even then. I was lucky to stumble on a forgotten deck, first printed in 1925 in Spain— the best I had seen but AKINAKA is better. It’s playable yet unique. The original is always the original but to me it AKINAKA series is its own original. Romanowski work & Fournier print is what I worked with, but the actual deck is not playable. The typography, the borders, the frames, the print technique and the story of four different cultures ruling over one country. To me the four different cultures are now one culture. And all the different times are now today, despite the cultural war you hear about even if you are not from the region between the people coming from the same country they all love. These are the cultural echoes in AKINAKA artwork. I still admire the original. And that should show in V01 designs. I am designing new versions with a team now, I care about playability now. We’re doing own fonts. Font design for cards is hard.
I want people to play with these cards and kids learn Farsi numbers and come up with new games. So, I’m still on a mission- I hope you buy the cards and like it and play a hand or two with it with friends. (ps-read my refund policy please if you didn’t READ this)
