Somebody Set Up Us the Bomb

MINION MONDAY

 
Of all the games I’ve worked on for Minion Games, The Manhattan Project was by far the largest undertaking. There were plenty of cards, boards, tokens, and funny little men to fashion for sure, but more than that, capturing the zeitgeist of World War II era propaganda and aesthetics was a deeply involving process. Instead of purely abstract spaces, The Manhattan Project is full of papers and posters, cards and envelopes, flyers and ephemera of a bygone day. Not only the design of these had to be right, but I wanted them to look old, like this box was a relic found stowed in the recesses of an attic.

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James Mathe, Minion Games whipcracker and all-around nice guy, was a stalwart ally in this cause. Throughout the process, he was always quick with an old 50s newspaper ad, vintage sales receipt, or a clever idea. Really, I can’t express enough it's worth your time to research materials in the theme you want to recreate! As much as you think you know a given look, there's nothing like a small period detail that can make a design sing.

The game’s main board was the bulk of the work. Since I wanted to convey a messy engineer’s desk, each element had to have its own design. I’m not fond of repurposing other’s stock images, so most everything had to be painted from scratch, from the weathered plastic frame of the cork board to the dingy ash tray that serves as the game’s “Bribe Pile.”

While the idea of a mess of papers was fun, I still wanted each piece to make logical sense. The spy track as film on a top secret file folder, the factories on an inventory receipt, and the university diploma all reinforce the idea of the what a given space you can place your hard-working workers is for.

For the cards, I wanted to reference the propaganda posters that are so defining of the time period. Bold but limited palettes, period fonts, and a good coat of wear and tear fleshed out the look. Instead of the standard white or black border, I placed the key elements on an actual poster shape, complete with tattered edges and a shadow to give that poorly pasted on effect.

FontBook, an iPad app I mentioned in a previous entry, was a great resource for font selection, with its ability to sort typefaces by the year they were created. Exploring these mid century fonts was a real joy.

The original Manhattan Project sold through its print run almost immediately on release, but fret not! Minion Games has launched a new Kickstarter. Not only can you get the original game, but a “Mega Expansion,” containing new bombs, buildings, nations, rockets, and famous people of the era, is up for grabs. You can even get this T-Shirt I designed exclusive to project backers!

A Font of Wisdom

TYPOGRAPHY TUESDAY
If you have an even passing interest in exploring typography, it soon becomes apparent what a vast world of typefaces are out there. Serif and san serif, text and display, humanist and neoclassical, standard and pro! Even when such things had to be struck in metal and assembled by hand, it was an expansive landscape. Now with computers to streamline their production and the Internet to share them in countless ways, it’s less a landscape than a veritable universe of ascenders, apertures, and x-heights. Navigating between them in any meaningful way is usually more an exercise in happenstance than design.

But if you're carrying an iPad in your travels, you have access to a stalwart ally. FontBook, from the folks behind FontShop.com, features an immense, if not quite exhaustive, collection of typefaces. While the icon for the app is a disappointing effort, it belies a really imaginative and eye-catching layout. Every page is subdivided into neighborly blocks. The gridded layout is always captivating to navigate, with larger blocks indicating larger number of sub-items in that heading. At your command, the extensive catalog of fonts can organize themselves by name, foundry, year, or style. Once you've found the one you're looking for, you can add it to your favorites or click the handy link to purchase it from, where else, Fontshop.com.

While just wending your way here and there, seeing what typographic finds foster your fancy, is certainly a good a use of the program as any, I've found it immensely useful for finding specific typefaces. Narrow it down to a specific style and flick your way through the thumbnails. A sample “Rg” is displayed for every typeface, and it's amazing how useful that letter combination is for getting the essence of a font. FontBook has been an invaluable resource while designing the latest worker-placement game, The Manhattan Project, from Minion Games. It's themed after World War II propaganda posters, and the typography is an immense part of the spirit.

The app requires an internet connection to get all “620,000 typeface specimens,” though it contains half a gig of samples of the most popular faces for offline use. As of this writing, FontBook is available on the iPad App Store for $5.99