500 Personal Playing Cards: The AI Sketcher at Xperience Day, Casino Baden

Some brand activations don't need a prize draw or a goodie bag to draw a queue. At Xperience Day in Casino Baden, one narrow black counter was enough – plus five robotic arms that spent the entire evening doing nothing but drawing faces.

On 11 September we brought our AI Sketcher to Casino Baden. The client was the agency KESCH, who designed and delivered Xperience Day for the casino. By the end of the night the counter stood at close to 500 drawn playing cards – cards guests actually took home instead of leaving them on a cocktail table.

The brief: a casino giveaway nobody throws away

A casino is a merciless venue. There is light, sound, gaming tables, food and drink, and no shortage of distraction. An activation has to explain itself in two seconds or it disappears.

That's why the idea from KESCH was as simple as it was fitting: “MY SIGNATURE CARD – your personal playing card.” Not a generic giveaway, but an object that belongs to the venue itself. Anyone who joined in went home with their own portrait on an ace of hearts.

For us that meant three things: the experience had to work without explanation, throughput had to carry a full event evening, and the result had to be good enough that people pocket it.

Five robotic arms, one playing card

The AI Sketcher is not a printer with a sketch filter. A real robotic arm guides a pen across the material and draws the portrait line by line – you watch the machine work, and that is exactly the difference.

For Baden we set up five arms side by side on one continuous counter. That has two effects. First, it multiplies throughput, because five cards are produced at once. Second – and this mattered almost more – the stand becomes an attraction in itself. Five arms working in sync pull people in from the other side of the room.

Each arm had its own tablet mounted directly on the counter, set to “Touch to start”. That made the entry point self-explanatory: tap, photo, done.

The holder didn't exist – so we built it

One detail you can't see in the finished card: out of the box, the AI Sketcher is built for the standard 10×15 cm photo format. The holder the material sits in is made for exactly that. A playing card, however, is considerably smaller and stiffer – and it has to sit in precisely the same position on every run, otherwise the arm draws next to it or past the edge.

So we designed and manufactured our own card holder: machined to the card format, with a fixed stop so every card sits reproducibly in the same spot – five of them, one per arm.

This is the part of our work we enjoy most. When a device can't do something out of the box, we build the missing piece rather than shrinking the idea. Custom solutions are our thing – and without that holder, the Signature Card simply wouldn't have existed in this form.

How it ran on site

The path from guest to finished card had four steps:

• Tap and shoot – the photo is taken right at the tablet. No photographer slot, no queue for a setup.
• Conversion into a line drawing – the photo becomes a reduced line portrait that still reads at card size.
• The arm draws – visibly, in real time, directly onto the casino-styled ace of hearts.
• Take it and share it – the physical card in hand, plus the digital version for sharing.

Guests pairing up at one arm and having themselves drawn together on a single card wasn't planned, but it worked beautifully – double portraits on an ace of hearts became one of the most popular variants over the course of the evening.

Setup, branding and staffing

The counter was fully branded in the Xperience Day design: black base, flying red casino chips, the claim centred on the front. Behind it, a frame in the same design served as a backdrop, separating the stand from the rest of the room and making it read as its own zone in photos, too.

We built up before doors opened, and our promoter looked after the stand for the full run time. At this density that isn't a luxury: keeping five arms running, restocking cards, briefing guests and answering technical questions on the side is a full-time job. That's precisely why we deliver every device as a full-service package – setup, staffing and teardown included.

The result: close to 500 cards

Around 500 drawings in one evening is the number that describes the stand. What's more interesting is what the number means: the stand ran virtually non-stop, with no idle time between guests, and the cards were taken home.

A giveaway with your own face on it doesn't end up in the bin by the exit. It ends up in a wallet, on a fridge door or in an Instagram story. For the casino that means the activation keeps working beyond the event night, without any extra budget.

Thank you, KESCH

The project came to us through the agency KESCH, who conceived and delivered Xperience Day. From the first enquiry through the card design sign-off to on-site logistics, everything ran smoothly and professionally – clear briefing, fast decisions, time slots kept. What stood out: short lines of communication and a partner who immediately thought along on special requests like the custom-built card holder instead of slowing them down. We're looking forward to the next project together.

AI Sketcher for your event

The principle from Baden transfers to almost any occasion: the drawn object has to match the event. At the casino it was a playing card; at a trade fair it's a card in the exhibitor's corporate design; at a company party it's the portrait on premium paper.

What stays the same: a machine people watch while it works, a result to take home, and – with several arms – throughput that handles larger guest numbers.

Planning an event in Vienna, Lower Austria or anywhere in Austria and looking for an activation that doesn't look off-the-shelf? Take a look at the AI Sketcher, or just tell us what you have in mind – we'll tell you honestly whether the device suits your occasion.

Music in the video: “Vibe Ace” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons CC BY 4.0.