Imported Playing Cards Re-launch now on KARDIFY

 CLICK HERE

Kickstarter Give-away!

 

To celebrate the first week of our campaign we will be giving away our only remaining prototype Legends PCC soft matte tuck, flat and framed in a box frame. The terms and conditions are as follows: anyone who pledges for a physical reward will be entered into the give-away; and we will only be drawing a winner if the project is funded. The winner will be drawn randomly once the campaign has ended and announced on Kickstarter and social media. 

 

So please go and show your support over on Kickstarter! If you haven't pledged already, please do. If you are able to spread the word in any way, please do. And if you want another deck or two please go and add them on now! 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ahaines/imported-playing-cards-re-launch-premium-playing-cards

Retro Newspaper Ad for Imported Playing Cards Kickstarter...

 

Kickstarter Re-launch inbound!

 

For everyone who checks in on the blog, allow me to provide you with a little insight into our experience with Kickstarter.

For anyone who has never run their own KS campaign before, let me tell you, it takes a successful blending of a lot of different disciplines and areas all coming together to be successful - and a lot of graft. 

I would class myself as a competent artist and designer, I know a bit about playing cards, and I believe I knocked it out of the park with the Imported Playing Cards - it's a great deck of cards if I do say so myself. Beyond that, I am not a social media influencer, a marketing or PR guy, a businessman or a financier. Me and my wife have learnt so much just in the past few weeks about what it takes to run a campaign that we are confident we can get our re-launch over the finish line, but we are under no illusions, it's hard work. 

We are a small unknown outfit looking to break into a saturated industry with our first product. It was never going to be plain sailing. I believe when you analyse in the cold light of day, we actually did pretty well even though we cancelled due to being on course to under-fund. We had nearly £3000 of pledges from real people who wanted to exchange their cash for our product - the ultimate test! And save for a very small number of friends and family who did it for the love, a vast majority of those backers were real people from the playing card and KS community who wanted to support our project and to whom we are very grateful. Needless to say, none of them knew who we were a couple of months ago. 

And this is the first big lesson I learnt: bring a bunch of your own customers to launch day. This is the reason the big projects from established brands get funded so quick. They turn up at the gate with an army of fans waiting to hit the pledge button, like the queue at Wimbledon, or the guys that slept out on the street for days waiting for the cinemas to show the new Star Wars movies (they're still new to me - I'm old). We had 33 followers going into our KS launch - when we hit the cancel button we were over 150. 

I have also learned that a majority of our backers are from the USA. And they want cheaper shipping! We have looked into some alternative postage services and methods and will be providing cheaper international shipping in our next campaign. I also admit I didn't fully understand how the add-on items shipping worked when I launched the project - by which time it was too late to change. 

We have reached out to a fantastic and very popular photographer in the playing card community as well and we are very excited to get him on board photographing the updated prototype deck for the new campaign to give it that professional finish. 

All in all we are happy the way our first campaign went even though it didn't fund. We learnt a ton, made a bunch of new friends and contacts, put the word out there about A. Haines Playing Cards and the Imported deck, and we are confident in the re-launch. 

I have added a new button on the side panel, clicking it will take you to our Backerkit landing page where you can subscribe to our mailing list and be the first to hear about the new campaign and Early Bird offers. 

We are in the process of making some changes and will be re-launching ASAP all being well at the end of this month or beginning of next. The deck of cards itself is remaining unchanged. 

As Featured on Kardify!

We are over the moon to be featured in the standout playing card publication Kardify, the article can be accessed using the link below:

 IMPORTED PLAYING CARDS FEATURE ON KARDIFY

Legends Soft-touch Tuckbox

We recently assembled one of the tuck-box proofs that Legends sent us, and I must say that once it is assembled it looks and feels great. You can really notice the soft-touch lamination on the card especially when you compare it in hand with regular tuck-boxes. 

My wife took a few photos and is currently working on a a video show-casing the tuck-box. 

I have included some photos below, what does everyone think? 

In other news, we've had a lot of activity on our Kickstarter campaign the past 48hrs which is encouraging, and we have an article going up on Kardify later today which I will link to in the blog once it's up.

All the best,

Vinyl Cut Stickers

 

Hi everyone. I will be adding high quality vinyl-cut stickers to the campaign, to give one away free to every backer and maybe to choose multiple as an add-on. What do you think of the below? Blogger isn't letting me add a poll like it used to so comment and let me know which stickers you'd like to see. 

Thanks :)

1. Mercury motif

2. Ace of Spades

3. Tuck

4. Back

5. Face card eg. King of Diamonds

6. Joker motif

7. Import stamp

10K views & update

The blog just clocked 10,000 views and still counting! Great stuff, thanks everyone for checking it out :-)

I've been away for a little while so I haven't been doing any design work or adding anything to the blog but I'm back now and looking to get stuck into some more polished back designs as soon as I can get my head into it, watch this space!!

Cheers

Raptor back - draft v1

I finally got around to drawing the new concept out onto a piece of paper as a (very) rough draft. Initial revisions will need to be:

• make the fleur-de-lys in the corners more prominent
• make the feathers in the raptors' wings slightly more distinctive and seperated
• do something with the centre circle, currently made up of the raptors' fantails, maybe put some legs and talons over the top
• make the circles more obvious and distinctive from a distance
• make the background flourishes fade into the background a bit more, bring the raptors out into the foreground a bit more

Very sketchy initial rendering of this new concept, but it's definitely a worker once it's had a few revisions and some detail and attention put into it.



New Raptor box

New box art and colour scheme from left to right for blue deck, red deck and black deck Linoid Finish Raptors.

These are gonna look sick!

Back design's hopefully getting drawn up during the week so watch this space.

Ace of Spades concept v2

This would require me drawing the eagle out and dropping it in there to replace this photoshopped version which I have included only as a concept, what do people think? I'm running with a finalised version of this or the skull beneath. Probably this.

Thoughts?

Ace of Spades v1

The skulls are back in town the skulls are back in town...

The Ace of Spades is the death card though right? So it fits.

Raptor is the name of the deck since the back is going to feature birds of prey, and the faded wings around the edge tie in with this theme as well.

There is another Ace of Spades concept on the way shortly...

Poll results...

Artwork on the aces?

Just the Ace of Spades - 24 votes (vs. all aces - 11 votes)

Tuckbox: 1 colour or 2?

2 colour - 17 votes (vs. one colour - 16 votes)

New colour scheme on fronts or traditional?

New colour scheme - 26 votes (vs. traditional scheme - 8 votes)

High Court

This is actually a 7 colour face scheme compared to the standard American faces which are 3 colour. I really went to town on the detail, with faces and hands, fingernails, hair and eyes all receiving their own unique colour. I want these picture cards to wow everyone who looks at them because of their beautiful colour scheme, but also to impress upon closer scrutiny once all the details are taken in.

The Jack and Queen of Spades are both holding something black to show their allegiance to their king, as the Jack and Queen of Hearts are both holding something red.

The colour scheme is based on a European style deck but the addition of the racing green was an idea of my own that I haven't seen anywhere else and I think works incredibly nicely.

I will get to work on the Ace of Spades (which I have sketch designed) and the Jokers very shortly and complete the full set of face cards before returning to the back designs.

With a splash of green...

Looking good?

Or not?

Thoughts?

Another colour scheme...

Slightly European in its origins, I really like this one too. The standard faces are again included on the left for comparison.

Face Recolours...

I have decided to add a subtle skintone to the face and hands of the picture cards, and add a light grey to the hair on the kings and queens. Take a look at these examples...



I'm pleased with this look, and I will start colouring all the cards to this style.

Turns out in the end the deck will have custom faces all the way through! Sweet :-)

New dress?

Sick colour scheme concept based on a Japanese casino deck I just dug out of my shoebox of magic tricks earlier this evening. I've included the standard cards on the left for comparison. You have no idea how sweet this colour scheme looks on a deck of cards in real life...

Thoughts?





Polls polls polls!

Some poll results for y'all...

Skulls:

An overwhelming majority of people voted against the use of skulls in my back design, with 23 no vs. 11 yes that's more or less a 2 to 1 majority, however, I have had several people on the forums and elsewhere tell me they would welcome skulls cautiously if and only if they were done right and added something to the design and weren't just in there for the sake of it, which is how I feel anyway, so the skulls still have a chance...

Favourite colour for a deck:

Incredibly even on this one, with no majority preferences to speak of, bar the odd result, red, blue and black all seem to be evenly loved, with the results: 8 red vs. 9 blue vs. 9 black. From a design perspective this means the first run of my deck can go on any of the three colours, although I was tending toward blue myself and possibly black for neutrality reasons (so hard to choose red over blue or vice versa!), the remaining two colours would be second edition print runs.

Tallys or Bikes:

As expected, a majority of people would prefer the deck to be printed on tally stock rather than bike, with 13 tally vs. 4 bike, a 3 to 1 majority. It's definitely gonna be tallys...

*NEW POLLS*

Now going up

Legal approval and design updates

The USPCC legal department have just approved my tally-ho style tuckbox design, there was potentially an issue with it being very similar to the existing tally box which is obviously a deliberate homage on my part given the stock I will be publishing the deck onto but I have just been given the all-clear to use a tally-style box which is great news :-) although the name and design will be changed slightly if I run with the eagle concept and not the gears n skulls, I'm almost certainly gonna be using a tally style box. Love it! It has always been one of my favourite boxes, and I think it will make a welcome change to all the custom bike designs/boxes there are out there at the moment.

On a design front, I have started concept-designing in a different way and have had immediately pleasing results, I will post my first and second drafts and a slightly developed mock-up version over the weekend, the eagle-back concept has become much more streamlined and aesthetically pleasing now incorporating the circle-heavy symmetry I've always wanted my deck to exhibit. I'm excited! I'm also gonna start vectorising my artwork at this stage in the design process and move onto the Ace of Spades, Joker, and Artwork card designs asap. I am toying with the idea of working up a slightly embellished ace design for each ace, not just the ace of spades, although I'm not sure. What do people think? I'll make a poll...

More on the way soon guys...