VSSL Playing Cards x That Type Guy - 1

Okay okay okay. I am so stoked to be sharing this with you, because I've been keeping it slightly under wraps until all the pieces for this presentation puzzle had arrived and now I finally can! 🎉

So, I have three dream projects (so far) that for a very long time I have considered personal holy-grails to try and accomplish through my work. I won't tell you what the other two are, but I can finally share one of them with you. For years, I have wanted to design a pack of playing cards. To be able to whip out a deck when a friend says, "hey, let's play a card game," and go, "yeah, here's one." I think that it's one thing to design a single stand-alone artwork, and another thing entirely to design and create something that is both beautiful and functional at the same time. Cards, I believe, are one of those things. I've always looked at beautiful hand designed and illustrated playing cards and thought to myself (often out loud), "man, I'd love to do something like that." And then VSSL came along ⚓

You may have noticed that towards the end of 2020 I shared work that I had done with the VSSL crew earlier in that year, where I had hand-illustrated their core business values as part of a soft rebrand and internal spruce-up of sorts. They were honestly the greatest clients I have had the privilege of working with to date, and they were kind enough to offer me the opportunity to have a go at another epic project. A dream project, in fact. They didn't know it at the time, but there was absolutely no way in hell I was going to turn it down. No way. I put my dissertation writing on hold (sorry lecturers), and smashed it out in a tight deadline with even tighter room for error. 🥵

This project needed to be done with upmost speed and taught me a helluva lot about leaving your own creative doubts in the dust and trusting your creative process. We nailed the brief, got it all ready to go, and the clients of theirs who got to receive them as part of larger Christmas gifts to celebrate the tumultuous year of 2020 were reminded of why they chose to work with the VSSL crew in the first place. Because they are dope people, who make epic shit. 🎁

I am so happy to have experienced this project with a crew who not only know how to put together an awesome brief for an even better cause, but who also know how to treat an artist with respect and professionalism. A dream is only a dream until you make it happen; so thank you to the @vsslagency for giving me the reigns on this one. You've made one guy very happy to be an artist ✌️