Kickstarter: Paul Michael Kane of Foto Grafis Playing Cards on Turning Failure into Success

Foto Grafis is a unique set of playing cards showcasing the amazing work of, Award winning photographer, Paul Michael Kane. Each image is filled with astounding textures and unexpected depth, transforming the ordinary into something extraordinary and spectacular! His goal is to turn an everyday, ordinary deck of cards that we know into something very special. Pocket sized fine art!

Unfortunately, Paul's first attempt was unsuccessful. He then re-launched his Kickstarter campaign, Foto Grafis Playing Cards Phase II on Jan3 2014. In less than 24 hours, Foto Grafis was fully funded and with 16 days remaining (at the time of writing), the current campaign has even surpassed the funding goal of the original campaign! Amazing turnaround!

We caught up with Paul to talk about the Foto Grafis campaign. In this interview, he shares the lessons he has learned from his first attempt, support from the community, the success of his project and how he turned things around.

Can you tell us about yourself and for your first Kickstarter project, why playing cards?
I am a graphic designer/photographer who is always looking for new opportunities and new ways of displaying my work. When I show my work at different galleries, you’ll find my images printed on glass, wood, slate and even metal, but the challenge has always been showing off as much of my work as possible – playing cards give me the chance to showcase 52 of my images in a nice, portable format – pocket sized fine art!

Why Kickstarter? It’s an exceptional format for creative professionals to present their unique vision to such a broad, international audience. As a self-publisher, much of the challenge of getting a project produced is finding buyers. Kickstarter covers that by turning potential “buyers” into project backers who, I hope, feel a sense of pride for their help in seeing a vision realized to the finished product. It’s a fantastic time to be a creative professional!

Unfortunately, your first project was only 63% funded. In your postmortem analysis, what are some of the things that you could have improved on?
I learned a tremendous amount from the first campaign. The biggest lesson learned was to offer up a finished product – something that was ready to go to production right after the campaign closes. I had a concept for my court cards that involved photographing models as stand-ins for the traditional court. I had only shot one Queen before launch and one during. I also slowly released the images for the card faces . . . thinking that would create excitement throughout the project. The deck clearly wasn’t finished and I think that uncertainty – that unfinished aspect – is what ultimately killed the first attempt.

But I don’t consider it a failure – not if I didn’t move on from it, learn from it and make another attempt at it. From a marketing stand point, it was a huge success – having attained new viewers of my work from all over the world. I saw upticks in all my social media accounts and a rush of new hits to my web site.

Did you get any help or feedback from your supporters during or after your first project?
Feedback from the Kickstarter community was wonderful. It was all positive and it’s what drove me to reevaluate the project and make another attempt at it. The one bit of feedback I heard the most about was that my concept for the court card didn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the deck – and after mulling that over for a bit, I realized the backers were right. So this time around, my court cards blend seamlessly with the rest of the deck.

Your second project, Foto Grafis Playing Cards: Phase II was funded in 24 hours and currently stands at 171% of the funding goal with 17 days remaining. What was different and what have you learned about running a Kickstarter project? 
I was just blown away by the response to Foto Grafis the second time around .  What I did this time around was team up with a local printer – which lowered my funding goal – finished ALL the card faces to put them on display . . . and finally, I restructured the entire project to one that was more focused on exposure rather than gains.

This is a personal project for me – not a commercial one. The commercial projects are the ones that help pay the bills – these personal projects are the things that keep my artistic vision fresh, which is very important to me.

Any advice for creators who is looking to relaunch their project? 
No matter how big or small a project is, you need a strategy to succeed  I call my strategy A.P.E.  

Anticipate,  Plan, Execute. 

If you do these three things, you should come away with a success. Even my first attempt’s failure was anticipated. But I had a plan and executed it this second time around and turned it into a win . . . for which I am just wonderfully grateful for!

Constant communication and contact is a must. Update your backers often – not only with words, but show the progress of your project. Personalize the project . . . own it. This connects project leaders with their backers . . . and gives backers confidence in you and your project.

57% of the top projects in 2012 missed their delivery dates? What are your thoughts? 
Hitting the delivery date is a HUGE deal for me – I actually have a personal goal to ship well before the stated delivery date of April. I honestly think that many of the most successful campaigns in 2012 didn’t realize just how big a hit their campaigns were going to be.

Paul's awesome collection! I am envious!!One example from personal experience is the Ondu Pinhole camera. I backed this project in mid-2013 with a delivery date of October 2013. The campaign was a huge success - and the poor guys just weren’t equipped to handle all the orders. These were, after all, handmade, wooden cameras. I didn’t get the camera in hand till after Christmas – it wasn’t something that bothered me by any means – as a backer, it’s one of the risks you take when funding a project. You really just have to anticipate these things as a project lead, going in – anticipate the best case scenario and the worst case scenario – that way you’re covered either way.

Finally, what are your favorite playing card decks? 
Now that’s a tough question . . . seems new decks are coming out all the time – both from Kickstarter and established brands. The one I’ve used the most is the Deland Automatic Playing Cards deck. This is a marked, stripped deck I used to use back when I was doing magic professionally in the early 90’s. While I’ve long (long!) since retired, I still use the deck in tricks for my daughter and her friends.

From a design stand point – I am just blown away by what Jackson Robinson is doing with his Kings Wild brand. The Federal 52 is just an amazing collection and really well thought out project. Can’t wait for the Sherlock cards!!

There’s also a few from Theory 11 that I love – the Rebels and the Monarchs are my favorite from them! See, I told you this was a tough question.

Thank you for sharing Paul! All the best in fulfilment. By the way, I LOVE YOUR CARD COLLECTION!!


Foto Grafis will be printed on premium linen stock by a New Jersey based company. Pledge starts from $9 and there are multiple free add-ons available such as poker chip, lens cloth and sticker. There are also multiple rewards that will be unlocked once the project hits its' set stretch goals.

Analytics: Kickstarter December 2013

December 2013 wrapped up an excellent year for crowd-funded playing cards. With the increased interest in Kickstarter projects, we've decided to publish our first ever tracking report where we will analyze the numbers behind playing card projects on a monthly basis. The goal is to give an analytical insight on how projects are tracking cumulatively over the year and the month-on-month performance.

Playing Card Projects 

December has been rather subdued month for successful projects. This is a surprise seeing that the prior month was the most successful month of the year  (19 successful projects).

Here is what December look like in numbers:

What is surprising is the number of projects launched towards the end of the month.

With the Christmas and New Year holidays in between the funding period, it'll be interesting to see the percentage of successful projects in January's stats.

Meanwhile, a quick look at how projects performed over the month:

Funding

How much did projects in December raise?

It is no surprise that most backers have returned to creators with multiple successful projects such as Uusi, Shane Tyree and Jackson Robinson.

Here is a look at the top 5 most funded playing cards:

The top 5 successful playing cards projects for the month contributed 92% to the overall funding of successful projects. The average funding goal of successful project this month:

Backers 

Approximately 13,630 backers were recorded across all projects in December, above the Year-to-Date average of 7,752.

Also, all the festivities did not stop backers from spending BIG.

This the highest average for the year. The following is a month-on-month comparison for 2013.

Top 5 Projects by backer numbers below:

Launched Projects 

Here are the top 10 most funded projects launched in December:

As expected, Zach Mueller's Blue Fontaine was the most funded this month. No surprise considering the success of his indigogo project and his legions of fans. Blue Fontaine raised over $17.6k in less than 24 hours. That is impressive!

That is it for 2013. I have a feeling that 2014 will be a bigger year!

Hope you have found these stats useful. With your feedback, we are hoping that the analytics section will evolve as we progress through the year.


Data provider:

Kickstarter: 7 Questions with Lorenzo Gaggiotti of Requiem Playing Cards

After months of hard work and anticipation, Requiem Playing Cards is now LIVE on Kickstarter. Created by Sweden based Italian artist/designer Lorenzo Gaggiotti, this unique set of playing cards is unlike any other... it is gory and dark yet beautiful in a weird way - this deck will not be to everyone's liking.

One of our most anticipated 2014 project, Requiem is custom designed and features darkness and pain as a theme. The illustrations for the Courts, Jokers and Aces are very dark. The suits are made out of broken Hearts, Clubs with thorns, cracked Diamonds and dry leaves as Spades. Pips are unique and the gold metalic ink on this blood red deck gives it a touch of elegance.

Between his busy schedule, we were able to catch-up with Lorenzo for a quick Q&A on his design background, the story behind Requiem, the design evolution and on the topic of crowd-funding.

We are a big fan of your work. Can you tell us about yourself and what is your design background?
I am a graphic designer, product designer and illustrator. I started drawing since the age of 3, when I learned to keep a pencil in my hand. My mother is a painter so I grew up between colors, shapes and canvases. Drawing is a passion and I never get tired of it, but I mostly love deep concepts and the idea behind a design. "Honor the concept" is one my motto, followed by "quality over quantity". So every time I design something it starts from a concept that takes weeks or months to be defined and clear. Simplicity is easy to read, but very hard to make.

I am Italian and I moved to Stockholm 4 years ago to start a new life in the cold north, which I enjoy it. I’ve always been interested in card decks, and I've been always "annoyed" by the standard design of the courts. Then in 2011 I found out the custom-decks-world and I got extremely excited. I wanted to make my own deck. To be honest this is the second one; the first one is now in the pipeline of HOPC and - spoiler alert - is very different from Requiem.

Requiem is your first Kickstarter Project. What inspired you to launched your own kickstarter project?
Actually I wanted to find a producer to sell the project and avoid the production and the distribution processes. Nobody was interested in investing on Requiem. I tried the big company such as Theory11, Ellusionist and many more, but I didn't even get an answer. I got a few replies from others, but they were not interested to buy and produce this special deck. I know, it´s quite different and dark. Kickstarter is a very good platform to show the design and raise the funds, create the orders and start a successful project. There is a lot of work behind a KS campaign, I´ll do my best to listen and reply to everybody, and follow step by step the campaign.

What is your inspiration behind Requiem Playing Cards? How did you come up with the idea? Oh...this is the key-question. Well, in a few words my soul has been maltreated as boyfriend, man and human being. You will read in the box and in the 55th card the sentence "chronicles of a lost love". So it´s a production of my suffering soul after my ex decided to end a relationship in a drastic and hectic way.

A classic broken-hearted story (see the pips). It´s a thing happened in June 2013. All the courts, the jokers and the aces describe a feeling (with a Latin name) and a specific date (day and month) with roman numerals. It´s a deck full of symbols and meanings (often untold or hidden). I just can say that the Queen of Spades is her. Art and creativity is a way for me to release and transform dark energy into beauty, shapes, colors and in this case a card deck. Somebody writes songs, I made Requiem.

Ok, Requiem is not as sexy as rock band member, but the creative process is often quite the same.

How much time was spend working on the deck?
The project started first with the joker Malum Ignavum the 5th of August 2013. Then I saw the potential for a deck and I decided to make all the 56 cards, using as concept the darkness of those days. The first “real” card I started drawing was the Ace of Clubs. It was the starting point for a structure, a template. The valve was finally open. It took 4 months drawing, changing, tweaking, redesigning and finalizing the cards, without counting the KS campaign and all the necessary graphics.

Wow! Can you briefly go through the design evolution for the Ace of Clubs?
About the Ace of Clubs, in the beginning I was not really sure of the final result, I tried some inked illustration and see how it could work. Then I noticed that was difficult to see the symbol and I did a club-shaped-bush with a flower on the top. In Italian we call clubs "fiori" and it means flowers.

The courts, as the standard bicycle decks, are inside a golden rectangle with simple horizontal symmetry. The red background was a choice inspired by my cheap ink-jet printer. One day I tried to print a black background, but the cartridge was almost empty and I got a maroon dark-blood-red color instead. It was a beautiful mistake that made me decide to use a deep red as background.

The courts are totally redesigned focusing on those bad feeling. The illustrations show darkness, blood and tears, sadness and pain. Sometimes they are quite creepy, or slightly gross. I wanted to avoid the copy-paste abuse and make all the pips different from each other. Of course I use copy-paste as working tool, but not to create an entire deck. Each heart has different cracks all over the deck, same for the rest of the pips through the 4 suites. I wanted the aces to be important, so they have an illustration.

What are your thoughts about the exponential increase of playing card projects on kickstarter?
I think it´s a win-win-win situation for designers, backers and Kickstarter itself. Often I see the tendency of ripping-off and copy-pasting an existing standard deck, just changing the color and sell it as the groundbreaking deck of the month. Seriously?

Someone sells a 5 minutes job as a big design piece. And the difference from a previous production is just the color of the backs. The faces are standard as the previous production. I just don't like it: poor, superficial, and boring. People use the word "minimalistic" instead of "copy-pasting". Minimalism is not that. Simplicity is hard to achieve. A review of such deck on Youtube should be 10 second long, saying: "take the old production and change the color from red to blue, or black, or purple". So you have 5 reviews in 10 seconds. Kickstarter offers a chance to make a real custom deck, where everything is redesigned.

Skilled designers know that it is a hard job. Months of work. Ok, they might be too artistic or too decorated. But why not? It's ART.

Finally, what are your favourite playing card decks?
Sentinels by Theory11 (Designed by Hatch SF) and Federal 52 (Designed by Jackson Robinson) are my favourite. I love the design of both decks even if they are very different. Vector graphics for Sentinels on white background: neat. Ink detailed drawings and vector graphics on Federal 52: artistic, warm and full of details. Details make the difference in my opinion. After the quality of the illustrations of course. Both decks are consistent, beautifully designed and executed.

Thank you for your time Lorenzo. All the best!

Available in Beige and Light Blue tuck box, Requiem will be printed by the USPCC. Pledge starts from $13 and there are multiple add-ons available such as T-Shirts and Prints... printed in Sweden!

There are also multiple rewards that will be unlocked once the project hits their set stretch goals. Most notable is the Augmented Reality app (free download for iOS and Android). This App will show hidden details and symbolic meanings of the illustrated cards.

That.is.so.cool!

Requiem will be due out to backers on April 2014.

7 Questions with Luke Peterschmi​dt of Meeple Playing Cards

Here's a a delightful playing card project to start the new year with, one that you will actually use. Created by Luke Peterschmi​dt and Jordan Martin of Geek Dyanasty, the Meeple Playing Cards is not an art-centered deck but a fusion of their passion for board games and playing cards. Daring to be different, Geek Dynasty didn’t make this deck to exclusively appeal to playing card collectors and magicians. Instead, this deck was created primarily to appeal to people who share their passion and use it to play games.

For the design, the iconic shape of the meeple is the hero of the deck. The meeple is basically a wooden game piece that is used in lots of European board games. Sometimes with slight variations – like wearing a hat or wearing a dress. It’s sort of the European version of a pawn.

Clean design is important for a great play experience. Hence, these playing cards were designed with that in mind - uncluttered, easy to read at a glance, fan well, stack well in solitaire games and recognizable across the table for games like Hold ‘Em poker. I personally like the back design. It is a symphony of Euro board gaming visuals: Meeples, wooden blocks, and the ubiquitous “score tracker”. Very useful! ;)

We managed to catch-up with Luke for a quick Q&A about this unique playing cards project, Kickstarter in general, and lessons from his previous projects.

Can you tell us about Geek Dynasty and what is your design background?
Geek Dynasty is my consulting company. Until this year, I used it to do work with major toy companies - we helped them make stuff and communicate with the more geek-leaning customers. The one job that some readers may have heard of was that I was the game designer for a product called Bakugan (if you have kids aged 12-15 or so, they probably know all about it - it was the Toy of the Year two years in a row). Not only did I do the game design, but we also worked on all the customer-facing issues except TV advertising. I helped design the mall tour, trained the CS staff, worked on organized play, etc... Last year I used the company name to do a kids book on Kickstarter with my wife and hyper-talented niece. Now I'm using it for my Kickstarter projects instead of creating a new imprint. I love the logo...

Almost all my design experience is in game design and business-ee stuff (I write a mean business plan). I have no skills at creating art, but I have a great art-background. My first job as a game designer had me working out of Keith Parkinson's art studio for 2 years and he taught me a lot - particularly about how there IS good art and bad art - AND art you like and don't like, and they aren't necessarily connected the way you would think all the time. But the key lesson is that there IS good and bad. After that, I got to do a similarly eye opening two years working with my good friend and artist Brom. Both those guys were amazing to work with and were willing to defend their opinions on art with logical feedback (they were the art directors on the two games). It was particularly interesting to see who these two giants in fantasy art looked up to and why. At the end of all of that, I found myself being a very good art critic even though I can't draw stick people. I feel very comfortable working with artists of all stripes and have been fortunate enough to work with great ones over the last 20 years.

This is your first playing card project on Kickstarter. Why playing cards?
I've been a student of Kickstarter for awhile. I do panels at conventions and conferences about crowdsourcing pretty regularly. This has me looking at various categories of products outside of games quite a bit. I was just blown away by what was going on with playing cards on Kickstarter. Such beautiful work by so many talented people. But my favorite part about playing cards is that they mix beauty with function (card games are "a thing" in my family). As my background includes a lot of card based games, I thought I might have something to add to the body of work being made.  

What is your inspiration behind Meeple Playing Cards? How did you come up with the idea? Because my background is in gaming, I thought I could mix my love of playing cards with my love of (European style) games. The Meeple is a piece that shows up in literally hundreds of games and is immediately recognizable by gamers as a sign of games. Since cards are used to play games, it seemed like a natural combo.  

How much time did you spend working on the deck?
My super talented graphic designer friend Jordan Martin and I worked on the deck on and off for about 2 months and we are still tweaking little bits now - we want to let backers have some influence in the direction of a few elements. Sometimes people see a clean design like this and think it's fast and easy to do - nothing could be further from the truth. When you work on something like this, everything needs to be just right. If one element is off even a little, the whole thing goes south quickly. These projects also take time to simmer. You think you're done, then you learn a little more, think a little longer, and new ideas come up that improve it greatly. It's a very different process from a more painterly style of product. I need to do a shout out here to the larger card collector community, they were super helpful with feedback on the project - who knew Jacks had flatter crowns? (they all did!)
  
What are your thoughts about the exponential increase of playing card projects on kickstarter? 
On the good side, the quality of the offerings are going up - and that's good for everyone. I am worried about the pure collectors. There is a reasonable chance that they are supporting the entire market right now, and I don't think they can support all of the various projects coming out. Before I started this, I had no idea so many folks were buying bricks of decks! I'm hoping the Meeple deck pulls in backers from outside the pure collecting audience - and hopefully grows the market for future deck creators.

You have previously launched 5 board game projects on Kickstarter (4 Successful and 1 cancelled). Are there any takeaway lessons from your previous projects you would like to share?
How much time do we have... In the past, I've used Kickstarter as a way to up my creative output, not as a way to make a living. As such, I've been able to be 100% transparent with all my projects, and often my choices are not something a person trying to make a living would/should do. That said, my main takeaway when I give talks about Kickstarter is that most of Kickstarter is about cashing in on existing equity, not a place to find new customers. All the playing cards campaigns are cashing in on the existing equity of Playing Cards - it's a thing we all know. Sometimes the equity is your personal network. You still need to bring the quality idea, but if you don't try to tap into some form of equity when you start, it's challenging. There are of course exceptions.

Oh yea, and shipping sucks.  

You have backed 25 projects to-date, what are you favorite projects on Kickstarter? and Why?
You caught me at a good time. Right now, I'm wearing my Planet Money T-shirt. I love how they used the money they made to do a fantastic series of web shows on how a T-shirt is made. But my favorite today is the campaign I backed for small batch Siriacha Sauce It's ridiculously good, and it feels good knowing that now the chef has enough capital to open a stand at her local farmers market. Seriously, it is really really good. Hard not to throw a mention for Brom's art book as well. I own a lot of art books but that one is particularly beautiful, and the prints that came with it were only something that could be done on Kickstarter. Plus it was just good to see a long time creative get value out of his personal equity in a way that wasn't possible before crowd-sourcing while giving such a good deal to his fans.

Thank you for spending some time with us, Luke. All the best with your campaign. 

The Meeple Playing Cards will be printed by the USPCC and is the first in a series of limited edition playing card decks. Each deck in the series will have it’s own unique look and concept.

[Update] Now only available in Blue, the limited edition Meeple decks will be printed on Bicycle playing card stock with an Air Cushion (linen) finish. Pledge starts from $12 and the first deck will be due out to backers on June 2014.