Kickstarter: 7 Questions with the team at Joc Fora of LA CATRINA Playing Cards

LA CATRINA Playing Cards by Joc Fora is headed by Salvador Bayarri and illustrator Ivan Toledo. The guys have taken the cultural and symbolic icon to thier creation. Art, style and function come together in this gorgeous deck of playing cards.

With this being Joc Fora's first venture into the custom playing card arena on Kickstarter, we were happy to have a chance to talk to them about their maiden voyage and concept behind LA CATRINA Playing Cards.

Can you tell us about yourself and what is your design background?
We are two guys from Valencia, Spain, 28 and 31 years old. Ivan is an illustrator, he is the one that makes all the artistic part of our projects, and Salva do the logistics. We previously participated in another project of crowdfunding but this is our first independent project. We baptized ourselves as "Joc Fora", a name in our mother tongue which would mean the same expression as "All In" in the traditional card game of our land, "the Truc of Valencia". We believe it’s a very good name because it represents the commitment we are making building this brand.

What is your inspiration behind LA CATRINA Playing Cards? How did you guys come up with the idea?
The first thing we did was looking at a lot of projects until we realized that we wanted to start making a playing cards project. We began thinking about attractive designs and LA CATRINA fitted perfectly with that elegant image that we wanted to get. We must confess that we had already experienced before the attraction by the beauty of the Mexican culture... Even Ivan has a Catrina tattooed on his arm!

How much time did you spend working on the deck?
Since the first intention of creating LA CATRINA Playing Cards until the day we published the project has been 4 months during which there have been many phases, more and less intense, even some unforeseen event that has forced us to delay some dates. By now we keep working everyday on this campaign, trying to spread the word and taking care of every backer. 

Talk to us a bit about going from the first draft to the final version. How did you get to this finished product?
We started looking for the idea of what we wanted, which in this case turned out to be LA CATRINA. We structured all the work: the design of the figures, the numbers, the suits, the back and the box design, and we started to draw sketches of the different parts of the deck. Once we get the result that we liked, we finally digitalized and edited all the artwork and sent the designs to our manufacturers for the first prototypes. We correct what we thought necessary until we arrived to the final product we already have!

From the project page, what are a few of your favorite reward levels and why?
What we want is that all the people who likes our project can participate in the way they see, either giving us encouragement in the comments, telling about our project to their friends or making a contribution in exchange for one of our rewards. Anyway, if we had to choose, we believe that rewards 5º and 7º (EARLY BIRD # [EVERYTHING] & [LIMITED & NUMBERED EDITION]) are probably the two best options to get the most out of LA CATRINA Playing Cards.

What's next for Joc Fora? Are there any plans after LA CATRINA Playing Cards?
Very soon, during the last day of this campaign, we will announce our next project! It will be an alternate version of this same deck, we will show an image as a teaser for all our backers, don’t miss it!

Finally, what are your favourite playing cards?
Our favorite playing cards, which were also a Kickstarter project, are the Arcana Playing Cards. The fact that them are made from 16 traditional engraved illustrations makes their artistic level stop no wonder, really seem the best we've seen.

Thank you for your time guys! At the time of writing, the project is 84% funded with less than 7 days to go. If you want to support LA CATRINA Playing Cards, you can find it on Kickstarter here! 

Pledge starts from €15 (USD$16) and the deck will be printed by the USPCC on Radiant Linen Finish. Dealer chip, close-up mat and uncut sheet are available as an add-on.