Five Crowns:

Monster Edition

Proposal:

My Capstone Project is a redesign of the card game Five Crowns to Five Crowns: Monster Edition, and will heavily draw from design rationale of traditional card decks, as well as a modern element by including a score-keeping app. To bring the aesthetics into a more exciting area, each suit will be influenced by a different culture, and each face card will be a creature from the folklore of that culture. This will add an element of interest for people who may not otherwise be interested in the game.

Deliverables & Scope

While this was the simplest and quickest aspect of the project, I needed a simple graphic and type treatment to facilitate multiple placements throughout the project without fear of changing each variation too much.
The heaviest aspect of the project, this included 62 individual unique illustrations for the number, face and joker cards as well as the backside of the cards
Drawing inspiration from 52-deck tuckboxes, I generally kept to a more simplistic border style to add interest, as well as making an insert that keep the cards organized.
Most of this section was caught up with making sure each section of the instructions was clearly read through and easily referenced.
This piece serves as both a simple way to keep score, but also a way to explain the influences of each of the face card illustrations.

Report Info

Company Profile:

Five Crowns is a rummy-style game with an added suit (the star) and double the cards to accommodate a larger crowd. Rummy is commonly only played once, but the constantly shifting wild card and stacking scores keep players of Five Crowns engaged and competitive.

The rebranding of Five Crowns to such a specific theme will keep that curiosity going, as the informational and illustrative changes keep players of all ages interested and engaged.

Target Audience:

The target audience will be a variety of people aged 10 - 60. The variety of settings and card game players varies widely, but I intended to bring the younger side of that age range in with the mythology-based illustrations. TV shows like Adventure Time and YA fiction like Percy Jackson show younger peoples’ interest in mythology and monstrous imagery.

Adult audiences have had a track record of similar mythology-based interests fostered by authors like Neil Gaimon and Terry Pratchett, so there’s reason to believe older audiences will also be interested in the game.

Objectives:

To independently research, design, and produce a newly illustrated version of Five Crowns.
To research and employ multiple cultures in the production of themed illustrations and provided information.
To use historical inspiration from the classic 52-card deck to influence the card designs and make readability an intuitive process while playing.
To create a box design that complements the illustrations of the cards.
To use typography and illustration to make the provided instructions easy to both read through and reference.
To draw inspiration from the instructions created to generate a simple scorekeeping mobile app.
To formally research and produce content to give each face card character background information for the curious player.
To formally present and explain each of the design choices made in the form of constructed physical parts, and in the form of a progress presentation.

Research

A large amount of my research consisted of pouring over several encyclopedias and other sources for face card inspiration. While I had a vague idea for the theme of the face cards, a huge amount of time was spent looking for one: a suitable culture with a variety of creatures to choose from, and two: one that would afford me enough information to help with the appearance of the creature. This was repeated for every suit and was extremely helpful in my ongoing progress through the card’s appearance and positioning of each creature.

Another aspect of my research was seeing how I should organize the illustration within each card. It took a while to find an organization style that was both flappable and well-balanced, and the illustration developed alongside each change. From the beginning I also had bleed and margin regulations given to me by the card manufacturer that had to be followed for risk of misaligning each card’s content when printed. Each of the following deliverables came a lot quicker once I had singled out a brand from the cards.

Process

From the beginning, a lot of the card illustrations I did stemmed from the need for it to be readable from both sides. Early on in the project, the illustrations were formed to a margin system, and then later a smaller area as it became clear the illustrations needed to be flippable.

A large majority of thumbnails and roughs were done on Procreate, since it made it a lot more simple to view all the cards together, and experiment quickly with color using blending modes. As I felt each design was finishing out, I would switch to Adobe Illustrator where I could format the illustration more cleanly. I built all the final illustrations on an isometric grid, which gave another sense of unity between all the creatures.

While both the logo and cards were being developed at the same time, I held off on the box, instructions and app designs. This ensured that I had a complete aesthetic to draw from that could tie the brand together in the end. Once the cards and logo were done, I drew the branded elements from both to design the box’s patterned fields. This was initially difficult, since the style I had settled on was simplistic, and most card boxes are extremely intricate. A similar process occurred when I made the instructions and app.

Finished Products

The completely opened box, minus the instructions.

Here is the sequence for a game played on the app, with progressing rounds and an ending announcement of the winner.

Here is the informational part of the app, with additional information about each of the face cards.