The Scratch cards - Part Five.

Here we are at Part Five.

If you need any catching up, here is the Original post as well as the sequels in Part One, Two, Three and Four.


Jumping off the overground, I swaggered into the familiar village-esque area of Forest Hill and knocked on the doors to my latest interview at Place in Print,  a company who specialise in word play and location/geography artwork, which if you know me well is right up my street. 

I was a whole 5 minutes early.

The owner, Ed, answers the door. A sudden look of surprise spreads across his face. 

"Oh! You're... early!" He exclaims.

There I stood, all smug. I'm a man who prides himself on his punctuality and usually shames people on being late. 
Finally! Some recognition for my timekeeping!

He continues.

"I thought we said next Friday?"

"Ah!"

Oh I'm early, a week early. We had a case of classic email miscommunication that both of us agreeing to meet on a Friday... but not the same one.

It kind of reminds me of a miscommunication I had once when I was referred to as 'Ms Kyle' in an email. I can only assume that this was because of my unisex forename. 
The cheek - I didn't even get the chance to be called a 'Miss'! Humph.

But regardless of this we ended up having a great chat, I'd highly recommend checking them out as a company as they have great work and a great attitude. 
Unfortunately, this opportunity didn't work out for me. Ed seemed to like what I had to offer but he mentioned that there had been over 80 applicants for this new position in his currently, one man company. That's massive competition. It makes you think that what sort of numbers you're up against for the bigger companies - two, three times that? More? It really puts the creative job market into perspective. 

Are we churning out too many creatives or do we not have enough jobs for them?

Cheers, Conservative Party.

Next up - I had been liaising with the creative lead at Innocent via email for about 2 weeks now trying to squeeze in a date to meet, kept being pushed back and back until things had to be put on hold until April 30th as they had a holiday booked. So unfortunately I was put back into limbo.

But fortunately for me, I also had a trip booked. I was invited by a friend to go for a long weekend in Athens. That's one benefit of having time off, you can scour for cheap flights and go on them when you want. Good food and shenanigans - with one perk of the trip being taken along to the Olympiakos women's water polo semi final. It was quite the experience:

When I returned I had an interview with Havas Work Club with one of the creatives there called Dan.

This was the view as I waited, they hired an illustrator to re-create all of Bart Simpsons chalkboard detentions. The illustrator hired even dressed up as Bart too!

We had an awesome chat and got along really well. Dan said he liked the cut of my jib and liked my work - which was great. Only criticism and it has been mentioned before is that there's not enough digital/campaign/social media work in my portfolio, which is true. This slightly irks me as these kind of campaigns are usually obtainable once you're in the job - it's a slight catch 22. It's not the end of the world by any means but it's no where near as bad as when 'Junior' roles that were advertised in 2010 needed to have 2-3 years experience (!!).

Regardless, it seems like this is the main weakness of my 'folio - so I'm pursuing some set briefs to tackle this and make it a bit more well rounded. Dan was awesome enough to give me a few pointers which I've happily taken on board and I'm grateful for.

All in all, I've had to reflect on this whole experience. The scratch card saga has lasted about 3-4 months now, the sails aren't as full as they were but I'm recycling the campaign further into new job applications which is still giving me exposure.

When I started this, I had 2 goals I wanted to achieve:

a) Increase my profile and exposure as an illustrator.

b) Get a brand spanking new job.

I can definitely say (A) has been completed. I've obtained crazy exposure, attention, commissions, contacts, you name it. It's been great and so much fun.

Now, (B) hasn't been achieved just yet - I did anticipate this may take a bit more time - especially for a creative role - and I've been very diligent and patient towards this goal in particular.

The dream job I want is to work for Innocent. I've been in and out of contact with them over these past few months without much flourishing from it. 

I'm going to get them.

I thought of an interesting allegory. My scratch card project has been like me qualifying for the Olympics. I'm here now at the games, now I need to win the Gold medal. 

So I'm making 'something' to really get Innocent's attention...


I'll be talking to Innocent whether they like it or not.

Stay tuned for later this week...

The Scratch Cards - Part Four.

Right! Part Four! If you need any catching up here is Part One, Part Two and Part Three. Here we go:


I got in contact with a company called Dirt and Glory, based in the Havas Work Club in London Bridge. They had an exciting new role as a Social Media Creative which sounded like the type of gig I was looking for. I met with the co-founder (they're literally a company of 2 right now) who was very pleasant and an added bonus he was a Gooner! They needed a creative type and I seemed like the perfect fit - clearly impressed by my scratch card project and saw the potential I could bring to this sort of role. They wanted to bring me in as the 'first man of the hour'.

It sounded exciting, it'd be part time so flexible with my own work, a decent day rate and exciting projects on the horizon. Could this be it? I left the interview with the conclusion that an offer will be sent over the weekend and we'd go from there. Jolly good, off on my way to a merry weekend.

Continuing my search (always safe to cover your bases) I was pointed in the direction of Whistles thanks to my pal Chloe - they were looking for maternity cover for a Junior graphic designer role - I had a solid telephone interview and was invited into their head office for a more in depth one on one interview - which seemed to go down very well and I felt fairly confident about it afterwards.

It was similar to the majority of roles that I've been applying to - digital design that is needed and popular for the requirements of todays modern companies. Work like layouts, web stuff, mock ups, product shots, touching up etc. For the most part and forgive me for sounding blunt, I don't find this very entertaining. However, an opportunity to learn and develop on skills should never be dismissed.

I'm by no means a natural choice for these kind of roles as my background is more of a left wing one stemming from illustration and design. Which unfortunately is likely to go against me - but I think it's important to maintain an element of individuality in your work rather than just be a 'Mac Monkey' like the rest of the designers out there looking for work.

But nonetheless, you should keep your options open.

I was tucking into some new beer label designs for Hellsize Park Brewing Co. on a Friday night when my email icon spun into action. Surprised and curious, I opened this rogue email straight away- who sends an email at this time? Shouldn't people be out socialising and doing things? He said, lurching over his laptop and tablet in dim lighting. To my surprise, an animal had got in touch called Stevie. Stevie The Fox to be exact.

Now, if you hadn't heard of Stevie The Fox - it's on trend with cafe's of a similar theme that are featuring animals. You heard of the cat cafe's, owl cafe's and yep, you guessed it - this was the Fox one.

They needed me. They came across my work and noticed my enthusiasm for foxes - they saw me as a perfect fit to design their logo for their shop and merch. I jumped at the chance. They needed a logo for Monday morning. This was an incredibly tight turnover but in my excited state I churned it out in record time by Saturday afternoon, much to the delight of Stevie. The logo is below:

A few days past and I was super excited at the prospect of my shiny new logo being on a cafe front and on various merchandise. Look at me, all shop front famous. 

But unfortunately for both Stevie and I, bad news struck. Stevie up until this point had overwhelming attention, a mixture of excited glee of the idea of playing with some tamed foxes, (and a few other critters too) excited curiosity and concern.
The concerns over the welfare and safety of the animals for their duration in this East London cafe was rising, in which campaigners against it assumed it would take the form of like a Cafe Nero with a few cages thrown in. Matters got out of hand, as campaigners got louder and ultimately compromised poor old Stevie, he was left with no choice but to shut down this exciting project before it even opened. Stevie goes on to talk about it more here in this blog post explaining why he decided to close.

There was certainly no malicious intent behind this project, but never mind, life goes on. I'm sure this won't be the last time we hear of Stevie The Fox..

Back to the search, a couple of weeks had passed and there was still nothing concrete from Dirt and Glory, had one phone call saying that we're still both keen to get things rolling - but nothing serious yet.. Granted that a small start up business will be extremely busy but time's getting on. There's only so much waiting one can do..

A few days ago I was hanging out with my good buddy Will and I got a buzz from my gmail app.

It was an email from the creative team at Innocent, they're back! They want to meet...

To be continued in Part Five...

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.

Samsung viral

I was asked by the company Duckeye (whom I had a work placement with last summer) to come back for a paid job as an assistant animator for this new Samsung viral. It looks great, a lot of hard work and long hours, check it out: