AOTY: Giovanni Meroni (Thirdway Industries)

[Don Boyer]

Giovanni Meroni's designs have long been popular with many collectors and club members.  He's got a unique and very modern signature style, very distinctive, and he often chooses motifs from mythology, common archetypes of good and evil and even contemporary culture.

From July last year to June this year, Meroni created three projects that stood out enough to bring him to the attention of the Diamond Awards Committee:
* Exquisite Fortuna - an experimental project with the Conjuring Arts Research Center/Expert PCC
* Modern Idols: Hope, Fear, Endless Hope & Extreme Fear Ed. - an ode to nihilism
* ORDER: Imperium, Revolutio & Electus Ed. - inspired by propaganda art and dystopian novels

Artist's homepage: https://www.thirdwayindustries.com/
Exquisite Fortuna: https://www.thirdwayindustries.com/product/exquisite-fortuna/
Modern Idols (Kickstarter): https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thirdwayind/modern-idols-playing-cards
ORDER (Kickstarter): https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thirdwayind/order-playing-cards

[Thirdway Industries]

Hello all, thank you for the nominee, I am honoured!

For a lot of pics of the decks, probably the best way is check my website gallery, there are a lot of hi-res ones
https://www.thirdwayindustries.com/product-category/modern-idols/
https://www.thirdwayindustries.com/product-category/order/
https://www.thirdwayindustries.com/product/exquisite-fortuna/

Some quick insights

- Exquisite Fortuna was an experimental deck I made with EPCC - we (I and Bill Kalush, EPCC owner) decided to make it purposely difficult to make, with 3 hot foils on card backs.
e Goddess of Luck, Fortuna. I try to impress her being bold, but she's a difficult lady. This deck was actually designed in 2017, so it took some time to be achieved perfectly.

- Order is inspired by propaganda posters of WW2, Orwell's 1984, Animal Farm and other Dystopian novels. It's a deck with an hidden and complex story, set in a fictional World dominated by a evil and powerful Unique Party called "Order". The decks are "Imperium", the deck for the common men and women that live under the Order's rule, "Electus" the limited edition for the Upper Party members (forbidden to everyone else) and Revolutio, that should be the deck of the rebels, but...
The main theme of the deck is freedom (which is a recurrent theme on my decks), against any form of totalitarianism.

- I got the idea of Modern Idols from a TV show, American Gods. I loved the idea of the "New Gods" that replaced the old ones - it was supposed to be a quick and fun series, but I had so much fun that I made 4 decks :-)
Modern Idols is crazy and fun, and include all the most popular "Modern Idols" we worship nowadays: Money, Work, Fitness, but also Love and Dreams.
The decks are called "Fear" and "Hope", that are, in my opinion, the two supreme forces that motivate men and women.

The limited editions Endless Hope and Extreme fear have an experimental tuckbox made by paper who look alike Fabric and holographic foil.

Feel free to ask me anything on these, will do my best to answers your questions

Thank you again for the nomination!

Gio