Making my own luck - starting from scratch.

Aloha!

I was staring at my green tea one morning and it occurred to me. Not only is Saturn fast returning, but it's been a good while since I've done any sort of interesting project. So I decided I wanted to be proactive and do a 'social design experiment' (ohhh err).

When I graduated from art school nearly 5 years ago, we were in the middle of a toxic recession.
Job applying was extremely hard, tedious, depressing and down right nearly impossible for creative types. Despite sending out numerous CV's and portfolios, you would rarely get anything in return. Even getting a reply in the form of a template rejection email was a rare treat.

At the time it encouraged me to go and do my own thing - freelancing and gallery work. These days the economy in general seems in much better shape and jobs are now more readily available. I figured it was a good time to approach this again in a creative way, unique to Jamie Kyle.

Anyone who knows me well knows I'm a sucker for a scratch card. I'm not a betting man in the slightest but as soon as I scratch away that silver foil, I go all giddy inside! I've won okay amounts in the past, the most being £100. I even won £40 on two consecutive cards. That was immense. Even when you win £1 it's exciting. This got me thinking, what if you had a scratch card that you'd always win on? Instead of winning money, what if you won a person? What if that person was an exciting creative?
"What a great prize!" I hear you shout!

Well, that's the concept of my idea - scratch away at a scratch card to reveal my portfolio. Interaction is always a strong tool to grab one's attention, even more so if it shows initiative. I'll be making the whole scratch card from, erm, scratch!

With scratch cards, notice how the odds of winning are displayed on the back, which I feel will ring true in this experiment - the odds of any sort of reply or interest are probably against me, making me very much a human scratch card.

In this case, I'm literally making my own luck.

I'll be sending these out to all sorts of companies: global, corporate, design, illustration, editorial and music to spread my odds (pun intended). I'll send these all out via post, everyone loves receiving post don't they?

Depending on the replies and the amount of interaction I receive, I'd like to display the results - perhaps as an infographic - but we'll cross that bridge if and when we come to it.

Let's see who takes a gamble (Pun also intended).

I've worked on this project for the past 2 months, updating this blog post as I've gone along so apologies if tenses are a bit all over the place. 

So, here's the skinny - the card stock and design I'll have no problem with. It's the scratch-able silver foil which will be the challenge. I managed to find this helpful online step by step guide how to do it with basically uses washing up liquid and acrylic paint. Photos below:

I tried the mixture with two types of paint to see which was better suited, I wanted to avoid any colour other than grey/silver to give a more realistic silver foil finish. When I was at home for Xmas my Mother had at a hand the perfect metallic silver that I needed.

Thanks to a suggestion by my Father I even tried a silicone gel to see if that would have a more beneficial finish/setting quality.

Mixed results, the silver paint coming through nicely but definitely needs several more coats. Promising all the same.

Decided to stick to the silver and introduce the silicone gel to a batch (the sample on the right above). As you can see, it did not take at all, it just congealed with the paint and didn't spread at all in the slightest, which was a shame. Oh well, I'll miss the strong ammonia smell.

Few more coats later and I decided to scratch away. The finished looked good, but as soon as I started scratching it all went to hell. It's definitely down to the coated paper, I have a feeling it absorbs too much of the liquid and would prefer a surface that lets it sit on top of it better, either by using a gloss or matt finish with a thicker stock.

Found a matt stock at 160gsm which was thinner than I wanted, printed onto to it to give a test run.

A few coats and a scratch later and really great results. The mega downside to this though is that once I apply the foil mixture it goes really wavy. Need to try and flatten it or find a thicker stock to accommodate the moisture and at the same time be thin enough to be able to be printed through my printer.

A teaser:

 

Mysterious...

I settled on a garish design fairly quickly, threw in a couple of foxes to keep it relative to me. In the picture above: Left is 160gsm card, middle is 300gsm card with the scratch-away answer on a separate piece of 160gsm which is stuck on top  of the thicker stock and on the right is 300gsm.

All foiled up.

Worked on all 3! Pleasantly surprised by this. The least convincing card is the thickest stock which is the bottom sample in the picture above, it was practically tearing apart when I was doing it. But the 'compromise' card in the middle is my favourite. Overall, this will mean a bit more work for me to do but glad it's worked.

I also decided to try it on a gloss finish stock, which ultimately would be a closer match to an actual scratch card aesthetic. Despite the much better aesthetic it became too wavy for a finish product so I'll combine the two stocks = Print the silver foiled answer on the matt stock and the scratch card on the gloss.  Hurrah!

Getting down to print.

First coats.

About 4 coats in.

Looking good.

Ta daaaaaaaa.

Corr.

All addressed and stamped.

Each one will have a shiny tuppence too. I'm practically giving money away!

So here we are. All ready to send. 52 envelopes. So like I mentioned earlier, I'll be sending them to different types of companies with the likes of: corporate, design, editorial, illustration, advertising and music. In all honesty I'm just really intrigued to see who will take the bait and get in contact.

If you're an agency or company who came across this post thanks to the scratch card, make sure you say hi! Drop me an email at jkdraws@gmail.com with your thoughts.


If you're a pal or kind stranger, I urge you to share this post too. G'wan, pretty please.


Let's see what happens!


Until next time.