TRANSFORMING AND ARCHITECTING THE PROTOTYPE DEVELOPMENT PLAN & ASSESSING 7 OF 9 CARD PRODUCTION COSTS

The first 2 greeting cards will model after gifts that I gave to Krist Novoselić (bassist of NIRVANA) and his wife Darbury as explained in the UNITY LIFE Timeline Archive found here. They will have one which is just a print of the artwork from FACET 5(77) ◊ SEED (the Dove of Liberation) like the choppy handmade card I gave them with that print (cut from bristol board with scissors casually). But more notably, it will also have one with the same artistic format as The 7 of 9 to illustrate the first plate of FACET 1(73) ◊ ORIGINAL which I gifted to them, not as a card, but as a handmade booklet with just a print.

The greeting cards will both have wide and raised art matting around the central artwork, and tiny transparent flaps that actually allow you to pin the card to the wall. I found out this genre of greeting cards already exists — super deluxe, framing ready, high quality fine art cards. Of course, it will be complete with gold envelopes which I can cut and fold-guide with the dye cutter. This inspired me : Someday I'd like to also create greeting cards, perhaps very similar to this, which just have dye cut flaps in the central area so that you can take a card from the card set and give it as a gift on the backing of an optionally disposable greeting card. The card can be removed from the greeting card or use it to show it off as an art print on the wall beautifully. This is for gifting a "single" from the set. 

I spent about $160 on the materials to make those, leaving me with enough materials to produce these in great numbers other than some low priced additions to keep replenishing as they sell. The expensive part is the double sided, letter sized adhesive — that's $25 CAD for 20. The rest is mainly supplies which come in 100 packs. But having this 100 pack of irridescent black cardstock and huge roll of holographic gold wrapping paper made me realize that since the greeting cards are probably not going to sell much, or very fast, I may as well dig into the remaining supplies and just get started on the prototype for The 7 of 9.

This led me to spec out the cost of making an entire 144 card set of The 7 of 9, which brought out much clarity about the format. The intricate artwork in the main part of each card will be 2" wide with some margin around it, meaning that 12 cards will fit on a letter sized sheet. This is just as I had initially invisioned in 2022 when the idea for the set was first realized. This sizing is practical for use of the set on a table space between players. A larger, less practical and yet highly ornamental version of the set for beauty and appreciation of the designs in fuller format has been invisioned, although I see now the cost is extremely high.

Roughly estimating my cost per set, it came to about $144 for 144 cards. It would involve the following layers : 

- A dye cut cardstock stencil with double sided adhesive sheet for the card front
- Two thin layers of holographic / rainbow hued gold wrapping paper connected by a double sided adhesive sheet
- A final dye cut cardstock stencil with double sided adhesive sheet for the card back

All these adhesive sheets and cardstock layers combine together adhesively to form a single card about the thickness of a credit card. This estimate is pretty rough and may or may not include packaging but I think they will pile nicely — the whole 144 tower of cards is too high with that card thickness, but these are grouped into 4 sets. That makes me curious about the packaging. 

It will take another $206 plus tax — which I don't have immediately — before I can get the supplies to fully finish the whole 144 card set. I will need :

- A pack of 16 KEYS colored cardstock sheets for $40 (which come with an assortment of mature, dark rainbow colors similar enough to The 16 KEYS set)
- 2 packs of 100 irridescent black cardstock for $60 (to ensure that the whole 88-card, double-set SOLVE COAGULA series is done, and not just a sample from each 7 design variations of card fronts)
- $60 for all the adhesive sheets for the whole project
- $46 for the silver rainbow hued holographic wrapping paper (this will be required in order to even produce one sample card face from each of the 6 unique card designs in the SOLVE set since those 36 cards have silver rather than gold).
- And I'm not sure if another pack of cardstock or wrapping paper would be needed for the so far unnamed 24 card additional set (likely not because I might just reverse the black and gold to make it even more gold rich on those 24 cards). 

The price is high to do all that, but that will mean the next 5 productions of the 144 card set will only cost me approximately $120 (or less depending on black cardstock remaining) assuming my wrapping paper doesn't run out (but it's a lot). But even now I can start designing and physically building parts of the SOLVE COAGULA sets. 

Now, of course when this reaches the store I'll have to increase the sales price to accomodate my time in creating them. I thought this was a fascinating topic, considering that I used to be a professional graphic designer but I'm now labelled purely as an artist — yet maintaining digital art as such a format quality element of my work. To go from producing art which is solely geared around someone else's vision as it combines with my creativity, to formally claiming myself as an artist — and fitting my sales into a product niche rather than a skill-customization niche — is a very natural progression for my life path.

I decided that my designer's wage in the past should inspire my new wage, and so I settled on $72 an hour for numerology reasons — since I used to charge $75 an hour for creating websites, logos, booklets etc. Now, my goal is to practice making these until I'm fast at it, and then calculate my time and add that — rounded to the minute or so — to the cost. I like the idea of being strict with myself charging only 1 60th of $72 if it was 1 minute, based on the hope that many sales would fill my time ongoingly for many hours of the day. 

It will take time to fine tune the price for sale using these guidelines but I am looking forward to doing my first rough job on the estimates. Regardless, it seems to me it will be a pretty high priced set, yet definitely reasonable considering the breathtakingly outstanding quality. In fact, there will even be an artist autograph involved with each set, which will come on the book that goes with the cards, or a card that goes with them. You will be able to buy the book separately.

In the whole process of this, my thoughts returned to the handmade booklet of FACET 1(73) ◊ ORIGINAL that I gifted to Krist and Darbury of NIRVANA. I started contemplating how to best produce this booklet with a similar design ledger. I'm already planning to add that boolet to the store, as well as the video manuscript of The MMII from  FACET 30(102) ◊ GROUNDING, in honour of Marilyn Manson's birthday. My plans for these booklets with the beautiful FACET plates (designs of much visual resonance with The 7 of 9) ended up being one in the same with how The 7 of 9 manual would be produced.

Privately, I will print these square format 7.5/7.5" books by demand in hardcover and then add my gorgeous fronts and backs to them with designs similar to the card set, and ceremonious ribbons to tie together at the right side of the book, as well as a ribbon bookmark in wide ribbon. The books themselves will be about $20-40 + tax & s/h, making the cost of production in total likely around $80-100 CAD. I find this acceptable as an expensive book because the PDF will be free, and the whole thing readily available directly on the website as well. I think it will fall into the realm of deluxe coffee table books quite nicely.