52 Shades of Greed is a fully illustrated deck of finance and OWS-themed playing cards with drawings from 28 top illustrators. Learn about who and what is breaking our financial system. Enjoy the incredible art on the cards!

After being contacted by a member of the Occupy Wall Street alternative banking group , illustrator Marc Scheff agreed to do a few drawings for a deck of cards depicting some of the people and institutions responsible for causing the Great Recession.

"As a freelance illustrator I don’t get many opportunities to visualize ideas that I am personally committed to, so this project was an exciting departure. 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. 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."

All of the illustrators came in with incredible excitement and ideas for this collaboration. 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.

It was a huge success. The completed designs can be viewed here, where the creators are looking for funds for future projects if you'd like to give these talented people a hand.