TEXAS LOTTERY
Every year, the Dallas Cowboys design their own lottery ticket. My design was lucky enough to be chosen for this years scratch off. In this post, I will take you through the development, changes, and final result.
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Our graphics department works closely with our Corporate Partnership department for this project. Once in the hands of the Texas Lottery, they make tweaks to the overall design to ensure print quality. While the Texas Lottery did take some creative license, the final result remains overall true to the original design.
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Our graphic design team was given direction from Corporate Partnerships to create designs with a 90’s flair. While that direction can be taken several ways, these were the 3 options I started with:
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The first ticket is very 90’s. With a shark tooth background that was prevalent in sports fashion, mixed with loud arched text, gradients, and bright colors, this design speaks to the feel of the 90’s.
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The second ticket is much more “Saved by the Bell” inspired and rightly so. I mean, can you say 90’s without thinking of that show?
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Lastly, the 3rd option, goes a little further back almost to the 80’s where it takes on more of a Sci-fi feel, but keeping the vibrant color prevalent in the 90’s.
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While researching for this project, I asked my sister (who buys scratch offs occasionally) to send me a picture of the tickets she chose to buy. Out of all the tickets in the image she sent me, one stood out the most. It was a very vibrant hot pink scratch off. This was a large part of why I chose to use pink in all three original designs.
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After an internal review with my department, the designs were changed slightly before sending them to Corporate Partnerships for review.
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The first design changed slightly, with a much more pronounced shark tooth look, some verbiage changes, and icons replacing the text for the prize packages. On the second design, the helmet changed to the 90’s helmet, prize packages were listed out and the 5,000 prizes badge was updated to fit the design better. Both options, original and revised, of this design were shown. On the third option, the star was requested to be utilized, and some text shifted around. Two options were created from the original.
These along with several other very good options were chosen by Corporate Partnerships to move forward with, but ultimately, the last one was chosen.
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Below are some different revisions of the ticket that were accomplished by taking direction from our Corporate Partnerships contact. These options were all created over the course of a month. As you can see below, there were multiple versions – some not so good.
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While the bright colors were liked by many and the original direction did ask for them, it was felt that the vibrant colors strayed too far from the Cowboys brand, and alas, my hopes of fusing hot pink with the Cowboys star was gone.
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Ultimately, the last version is what was sent on to the Texas Lottery. With a few tweaks on their end – shifting some elements, adding a stroke around text and prize options, reverting back to helmets instead of dates, and replacing the triangle background with a sparkle option, the final version looks like this –
Overall, I am extremely grateful to have this experience under my belt. It taught me not only how to work with a client, but how to take direction (good or bad). It also helped me to be able to communicate with a client as to why something may or may not work the way they think it will. This project may have been tedious at times, but now I can look at that project and be proud to have taken part in it. Go Cowboys!