Game types: Card decks
Flagship game: Junior hanafuda, a centuries-old style of Japanese playing cards reimagined with a punchy, modern design. For Louie Mantia, it all started with an emoji. An icon designer by trade, Mantia was hired three years ago to design a hanafuda emoji for Facebook. Loosely translated as flower cards, hanafuda is a Japanese deck of 12 suits of four cards each, depicting the months of the year and the country s flora and fauna. As soon as Mantia started researching the art form, he fell in love. I went totally overkill and bought 50 decks, says Mantia, the designer behind Portland card company Junior.