Seattle Sprawl Box Set Graphic Design…

In a previous post I started to share some of the artwork for this coming box set, but this time I thought I’d discuss the graphic design surrounding it.

I’ve a descent eye for graphic design and often have a good sense for how things get done. Other times, it feels like a black box where we feed disparate parts in one side and graphic design (in this case, Matt) spits out awesomesauce on the other end.

For the design of the lid for Seattle Sprawl, Matt did just that, giving us two different designs to choose from.

The first takes our standard graphic background (the textured, blackened cityscape) and applies the other elements for this lid.

The second version took the stunning, full-color, poster map that’s in this box set of the Seattle Sprawl and folded it into the graphic design.

Now the concern was rightly expressed that the extra oranges in the background were a little too close to the oranges/yellows in the main illustration and hence there’s a ‘muddying’ and ‘too busy’ effect. However, there was something really compelling to me about this. So I spent two hours actually printing it out, cutting it up and carefully building the lids for both of these out of high end color printing paper, which gave me the following:

Once I’d built the lids, it was clear that those “muddying” or “too busy” effects were amplified by seeing the side panels alongside the front. And once you put it into box shape, not only do those drop away, but the box just has so much more character and draws the eye, especially on the side (which is almost never the case of sides). [No matter how long you’ve been doing this, sometimes you simply have to build it to really see what it will look like on a shelf or the game table.]

So Mat’s graphic mojo once again wins and we keep this project moving towards the printer.

Enjoy!

Randall