The Scratch cards - Part Three.

Here we are at the third chapter of the scratch card saga, it's been quite an adventure so far hasn't it?

If you need any reminders click here for the first part and the second part.

Anyway, in the middle of all this scratch card action I actually had a holiday booked to Budapest with a couple of mates  - a welcome break amongst all the paparazzi and media attention.

You could say it was the Budabest..

*tumbleweed*

Upon my return I got a better idea to the conclusion of the Innocent Drink's situation - basically, if they had the space they would have me in. After talking to a few people in the business it was clear to the fact that this is because they're owned by Coca Cola.

But what do you mean? I hear you ask. Surely, if you're owned by the world's biggest conglomerate, they'd be plenty of room for financial and personnel leeway?

Quite the opposite in fact.

Coca Cola were brought in to help manage and control finances better within the company - if anything when they bought Innocent they had to let people go. If Innocent were still the independent company they once were then obviously they'd have more direct control over such matters.

But hey ho! They're keeping me on file for when a position opens - I'm aware most companies have a tendency to say this but it does seem a bit more genuine considering the events over the last few weeks.




From here I had interviews from companies including Ralph, Cadogan Tate, SMC Design and The Carpenters Workshop Gallery to name but a few. The roles varied creatively which is ideal as I really want to cast my net as wide as possible to see what really grabs my attention.

One element that is still completely surprising to me is that I've had a few offers from companies (whose names I won't mention) of unpaid internships. I thought these were a thing of the past? Any company executive or manager that accommodates and authorises this should be quite frankly ashamed of their work ethos.

But that's another rant for another time.

Moving on, in a bizarre twist of events, I got an interview at a modelling agency.

I know right!

I'm not sure if it was through the DASH magazine launch party where I managed to hand out a few business cards and make exceptional small talk or just through the scratch cards themselves but I got called into Fusion Management, down in Victoria.

I was sat down and taken through the skinny.

"We love your look." They said wide eyed and enthusiastically.

"Yeah, we always need Shoreditch hipsters and cockneys on our books, even though you're from West London." They said very matter of fact-like.

On the outside.

In the inside.

"So it's only £200 to sign up, it's not like you'll be breaking the bank or anything..."

Didn't like the sound of this. I went away with the relevant information and did some research by asking my acting and modelling chums. The general consensus is that you pay sweet F-A up front.

They were probably trying to make a quick buck out of me and get me on their books at the same time - which is rather cheeky - and £200 is an awful lot just to go into something without much guarantee.

My good friend Louis suggested going to an open casting in Shepherds Bush instead if this was the kind of thing that interested me. Being the vain individual that I am, it totally did appeal to me so off I went!

After a 40 minute queue I got my details and photos taken. I actually got called in to be an extra in a feature film a week later - which turned out I need extensive fight experience rather than my street cred, so unfortunately I couldn't do it...yet.



So a slightly hilarious and surreal tangent in many ways in this job search - like I said though, it's good to have a lot of options on the burners. I'm holding out for that awe-inspiring moment for the time being, which I have a feeling is just round the corner...



Next time: Double or nothing? Will Jamie survive against the odds? More interviews! More shenanigans! And foxes? Find out in Part Four..

The Scratch cards - Part Two.

All this exposure was immense, I got other notable mentions from Design Taxi and Elite Daily which was beyond fantastic. There were numerous Twitter accounts who post and re-post Buzzfeed articles constantly, this probably explains how I got articles about me in France, Netherlands and Estonia.
The Estonian link in particular was actually one of the most in trafficked articles to my blog - usually my audience is predominately the UK or US in terms of stats, but Estonia completely leap frogged USA by a couple of hundred views.

Maybe I should go there for a job?

Estonia, if you ever need a honourable Eurovision contestant you know who to call.

I was feeling pretty good about myself - look at me, all internet famous.

 But it's a fickle limelight. It got quiet for a few days again, I was waiting for another ripple in the ocean...

I continued to be patient and carried on with my otherwise 'standard' job searches. I was given an interview by an entertainment company called Sternberg Clarke as a content writer/blogger of sorts. This would be a fun job - getting paid to go to events etc. I confidently took the interview and felt great about it, making sure to showcase my new found internet fame in the interview itself too. The show off.

I took the bus after the interview - my phone buzzed with excitement - a new update on the scratch cards.

I got an email from the Editor-in-chief of Dash Magazine NoéMie Schwaller:

I did think at one point that some of the scratch cards would get lost in the post but didn't think there would be a penny thieving postman on the loose. Will our streets ever be safe? Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves..

Regardless, I was really happy with the email and NoéMie was kind enough to instagram this to her followers on the DASH account and her personal account:

That's not all - about an hour later I got another instagram mention in the form of the lovely shop Lik+Neon off Brick Lane:

Super sweet,  I'm currently talking to the owner about showcasing my greeting cards there which is great. These responses were definitely more what I wanted; exposure, opportunities and that horrid word... networking!


I'm a firm believer that there's always 2 sides to every coin, so everything good must have something bad. Any praise should have criticism too. I had an abundance of praise up until now and karma was kicking in and knocking on my door. I was due my comeuppance to restore the equilibrium, this took the form of popular aggregator site Reddit, which some of you may be familiar with.

It's a fun site with the latest memes, articles and jokes. It's self described as 'the front page of the internet'. As much as this can be a fun site, the members or 'Redditors' or 'Le Reddit Army' are widely known for being absolute trolls. I naively put a link on their Design section, thinking I could get more praise and feedback on the scratch cards.

Oh man, was I wrong.

Within a couple of hours I got a tirade of abuse in the form of about 70 comments or so. It was a lot to take in and quite frankly a bit upsetting how personal the abuse got. The majority of the people commenting missed the point of my project in that I intentionally designed a garish looking scratch card to capture attention of prospective employers and that was my goal.
I'm a designer who majored in illustration and quite often consider myself an Artist rather than a Designer, whereas in this section of Reddit lurk pure typographers who scrutinise everything. You could say they were jealous and perhaps they were, but there's no point dwelling in negative interactions.

DoWn WiTh ThE hAtErZzZz!!  Onwards and upwards!



Earlier I mentioned how NoéMie instragrammed my scratch cards for me, to top this treat I got an email from DASH a week later inviting me along to their fashion launch for their SS15 issue. 

Look at me all fashiony and that.

Thrown in the deep end for sure! As you're all completely aware already - I have fantastic (Kyle) style so I'll be able to slot in fine visually, but this is to the next level in terms of networking. 

Unfortunately I had no plus one on my invite, which would make breaking the ice ten times easier. Undeterred, I ventured to Holborn, ready with my conversational quips.

"So.. clothes eh?"
"We have so much in common! I like to wear them daily."
"Black is so in"


(Disclaimer - I thankfully didn't say any of that, here are some snaps)

Fashion people!

Clothes!

Clothes! Fashion!

Fashion!

It was a very unique experience, which I really enjoyed. For the life of me I couldn't find NoéMie but I managed to make small talk and hand out a few business cards so not all was lost. The event photographer followed me for a bit and was snapping away at me. Nailing the Kyle style. Then another guy asked me to hold the events sponsored soft drink called Laimon, so there's a photo somewhere lurking in the world of me posing with a can of lemonade. Alright! If any photos happen to float about I'll make sure to stick them up here.

(Edit: 16/03/2015 - only gone and found the photo haven't I!)

The adventure continues in the next episode: Budapest, interviews, modelling, despair, excitement and more in Part Three..

The Scratch cards - Part One.

It's been a manic few weeks to say the least.

I thought I'd start elaborating and explaining the events that have happened to me in sequential blog posts - this post is about the initial response and reception to the scratch cards I sent out:


Initially, I got nothing.

I sent all the scratch cards in the post with 2nd class stamps, this was mostly to be cost effective but forgot how slow they travel. About 5 days had passed and I feared the worse and that it didn't work in the slightest. "All the effort of doing this, for nothing!" I said to myself, cradling myself in the foetal position.

But then, a light. I got a tweet.

Michael Acton Smith OBE is CEO and founder of kids entertainment company Mind Candy and Moshi Monsters. Both really cool and creative companies. My Twitter essentially snowballed from there. Lots of tweets, retweets, favourites meaning I amassed approximately 70 new followers in the space of a week or so. Absolutely bananas.

Within a few hours of this tweet, I received an email:

Declan sent me over some questions which I answered in excited glee. A few hours later it was a live Buzzfeed article.

Probably the only time I'll be in between Jaden Smith and Benedict Cumberbatch.

From there, I got mountains of congratulations in messages and emails. It's been really amazing and overwhelming how many people were pleased for me, I'm incredibly touched.

THEN from here - I got a message through an old friend asking if I wanted to go onto London Live for a TV interview. 

It was all rather surreal. A cab picked me up the next morning at 5.30 am and I went off to telly land.

TV land.

The green room with appropriately green chairs.

Living the high life with all the instant free goodies.

The other guest in our slot was an exotic animals handler. Managed to play with a snake and a gecko!

(Blurry) Security pass.

On the telly - click here to watch.

Oh dear. Not too impressed with that last shot.

It was an hourly segment in the news show which was repeated meaning I did the same interview 3 times with slightly differing questions. What an experience! The first time round I was fine, I was actually a little nervous the second time round but otherwise it was an absolute adrenaline rush.

As if that wasn't enough, that afternoon when I got home I got another email:

To be continued in Part Two...

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.