What do you do with staff members’ old shirts and spare business cards? Throw them out. Alternatively, you can sew them together to make cushions and fill them with the shredded cards. That’s what we did. The result was 30 cushions, each a one-of-a-kind and 100% GENUINE. And the best thing is: the cushions were made by Bridge & Tunnel, a start-up from Hamburg, which provides opportunities to people seemingly without prospects.
We had a prize draw at Christmas among thousands of customers, partners and friends to give away these 30 cushions. We also made pretty cards using textile printing – a lengthy production process – and sent them out.
First the print shop put the bilingual text at the back of the square cards and printed a simply black graphic pattern on them, similar to the patchwork design of the cushions, on the front. The front, as a basis for our textile printing, was fully covered with a matte, transparent foil. Then we took rough denim fabric, soaked it in our luminous CI coloured dye and carefully pressed it onto the card with paint rollers. This gave the card not just colour, but also a textile structure. A tactile experience! We did the same with the hang tags for the cushions. The printed sheets were sent back to the print shop, were they were cut into cards and flag labels were added. That’s where we hid the raffle tickets – all you had to do was cut it open and see if you’ve won.
We donated 1 euro to Bridge & Tunnel every time a blank was drawn.
