Dezeen Magazine

Jean Jullien turns playful dog illustrations into card game

Jean Jullien illustrates card game with playful dogs

French illustrator Jean Jullien has collaborated with start-up Yolky Games to design a card game that will feature a series of playful dog drawings.

Called Dodgy Dogs, the game will feature an assortment of different breeds of dogs that are each misbehaving – chewing, stealing, humping and escaping.

Players of the game will take it in turns to lay a card down on the table that must match either the breed, or the behaviour, of the dog on the previous card. The winning player is the person that gets rid of their cards the fastest.

"Dodgy Dogs is a playful approach to the honest and comical world of man's best friends," said Yolky Games.

There are currently 15 dogs in the collection, including a basset hound, bull terrier, chow chow, bloodhound, sharpei and whippet. Each character is drawn by Jullien, who previously redrew Dezeen's logo, in his signature style.

"Jean Julien has meticulously illustrated each card with his distinctive black brush strokes, light-heartedly drawn characters and distinguished hued simplicity," said the brand.

"Its modest simplicity mirrors not only Jean's approach to his body of work but also the simple joys of life."

Yolky Games reached out to Jullien after seeing his picture book Under Dogs, which features a series of satirical vignettes of dogs getting into trouble.

A list of dog breeds was then confirmed and sent over to the illustrator, who is based in London.

"The entire concept of this project plays around the idea simplicity, so the rules follow that thread. At the start of the game, you are dealt a hand of Dodgy Dogs. They will be one of four different sizes, and they will all be performing one of twelve different bad behaviours," explained Yolky Games.

"The first player places one of their dogs down on the table. The player to their left must then match either the size, or the behaviour of that dog, and place theirs on top. If they can't, they have to pick up cards from the stockpile until they can place one down. And so it goes."

There will also be special cards like the Dog Whisperer, which allows a player to play any dog they like, and a Wild Card, which makes every player swap cards.

Jullien, who graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2010, rose to prominence with his Peace for Paris illustration, created in response to the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, which became a shared symbol of unity in the aftermath.

More recent work sees the illustrator tell the story of furniture brand Emeco in an animation short and turn faces into plates for Case Studyo.