Description
– Launched Jun 2022 on Kickstarter, 145 backers pledged $6,136, out of $3,500 goal, to help bring this project to life.
– Check out the YouTube review by Fluffy Flamingos
– cardistry shorts by BartBSCK
– and the official trailer
– Kickstarter page
Hey everyone! Welcome to X-Decks! We decided to create a lofi deck because of its relatability and playfulness! We think that everyone in this community has probably listened to Lofi before, if you haven’t just look it up on YouTube. Everyone probably knows who the lofi girl is if you don’t also YouTube that. If you look through the deck you’ll see many nods to lofi videos and subtle Japanese and music culture.
To accomplish making this deck with a lofi theme we added several things. We added fluorescent ink so that different aspects of the card glow under blacklight. We designed the tuck box to resemble an old walkman which is a vintage portable music player, and the collectors box that holds up to 4 decks at a time looks like a classic boombox! Oh and did we mention that it plays music? (It will play the lofi beat that we used in the trailer for this deck.)
For this deck we used:
Premium Paper
Linen Finish
2 Pantone Colors
We print through the US playing card company. We have customized court cards designed by the talented Max Jung. They are close to default courts with slight (sleight) alterations and custom colors. (You should take a peek.) We also have a free collectors boom box (that plays music) for anyone who purchases 4 or more decks of lofi playing cards, while supplies last.
With the court cards we wanted to make sure they were custom but not too far from default that they were unrecognizable. Every court card has special elements added to it. Some with headphones, some holding smart phones and chewing bubblegum and others playing with other pieces of technology.
AND our special King of Hearts has a special trick with a reveal. We’d love to teach you the trick and that will be released on our YouTube channel.
The aces are all based around actions that may be taken in a music interface i.e. Add, Pause, Favorite, and Play.
The number cards all have custom colors on them with each card having a pip that looks like a neon light.
The jokers are made to resemble items you may find in a lofi video. Such as a cup of coffee or a soda can. Also did you notice what brand the soda is?
The back design was created to represent a scene you might find if you googled lofi. The back includes 4 radio waves on each side of the back that make for a great design in rotation moves such as paddidle or WERM. These waves also glow under black light. The center is an abstract idea of more wifi radio waves and the rest of the background includes shooting stars and a sky speckled with faint basic stars. It includes pink clouds as well as utility poles. These poles hint to X-Decks’ founder who is the CEO of H-J a family of companies.
The tuck box of this deck is designed to look like a Walkman which is a vintage portable cassette player.
The stickers are special because one represents the interface you may find on a music streaming site such as Spotify, and the soda can matches the pack of the tuck box where it looks like a sticker has been partially torn off. So now you have your own life size version of that sticker!
Our special collectors box is a custom designed case that looks like a boombox that carries 4 of our Lofi decks and it also PLAYS MUSIC!
X-Decks is where artistry meets craftsmanship. Our goal is to be the main hub for all your playing card needs.
X-Decks is also in the market for creating its own decks! We’ve seen a lot of decks where the card backs are just recolored. We don’t want to do that. We want to create cards that have fine attention to detail and are creative and fun! We want to participate in the community that loves the creativity behind what they do. We also want to be collaborators. Our founder loves the art style behind many decks which is why we stock so many, but he also loves the artists! He wants to support more artists in the community so if you have ideas, we’d love to see them and maybe we can collaborate!
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Comparable to the widely popular sleep and meditation apps, such as Headspace and Calm, lo-fi hip-hop puts listeners in the zone to either focus or relax. Playlists often titled “lo-fi hip-hop radio” or “beats to study/relax to” are widely available through YouTube channels that upload or live stream them.
The term “lo-fi” comes from the term low-fidelity, referring to the low accuracy of the sound that is reproduced. The genre of lo-fi, though wide-ranging, is typically characterized by its imitation of lower sound quality. It tends to have the crackling distortion and noise that is reminiscent of a vintage record.
The origin of lo-fi hip-hop is difficult to pinpoint because of the subjectivity of the genre and the broadness of its following. However, the genre’s evolution is thought to be traced back to shoegaze or dream pop, a subgenre of alternative rock. More recently, it is attributable to chillwave, a microgenre that surfaced in 2009 and was influenced by dream pop. Those influences weaved together to make vaporwave and finally led to the emergence of lo-fi hip-hop.
Similar to lo-fi, vaporwave’s ideology is heavily based on visuals and graphics that are meant to evoke a certain mood through their ‘90s aesthetic. For representative YouTube channels such as ChilledCow, College Music and Chillhop Music, the infinitely looped clips of the anime study girl keep listeners company. The study girl is originally a character from Studio Ghibli’s “Whisper of the Heart,” and her popularity made anime emblematic of lo-fi’s mellow, serene aesthetic.
However, with study girl’s popularity, some of the original channels like ChilledCow faced copyright concerns, leading to live streams being temporarily shut down. Artists like Juan Pablo Machado were able to capitalize on this issue and give her a makeover, recreating the same image by placing her in a different room with new clothes and hair. Study girl serves as the mascot for lo-fi music, appearing on merchandise, memes and fanart.
Lo-fi also pioneers a distinct culture in the music industry, as it is the only one to exist solely online. Though the budding artists find the online space conducive as a welcoming channel, they are also finding alternate ways to stay afloat financially. Ryan Celsius, a DJ who runs his own lo-fi YouTube channel, says renting storage on cloud servers costs from $200 to $300 a month. In addition to his ad revenue and Patreon earnings, he makes approximately $1,500 in profit monthly.
Behind YouTube channel College Music is Jonny Laxton and Luke Pritchard, who turned their lo-fi stream channel into a record label. Artists featured in their streams are shown on Spotify, which is what distinguishes College Music from other channels that keep artists anonymous. Pritchard said he would occasionally receive requests from artists who offered money to have their pieces featured in the stream’s rotation. Despite monetization’s seduction, College Music turned those requests down to secure their integrity in objectively discovering and showcasing hidden gems.
Lo-fi gives the music industry hope by leaning toward the accessibility of beats and away from their technicality and methods of production.
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