Graphic Design

Gaming is an experience, and players/publishers can't experience it properly if it looks terrible.

If you're experienced with graphic design, you can ignore this article.

Your game should be neat. This means it's simple, clear, and not ugly.

The best design is design done by a professional. The second-best design is no design at all, which is what you should do.

A neat game appears like a blank canvas to a publisher. It's not amateurish and off-putting. Nor is it so professional that the publisher assumes you want to keep it, and that it can't be changed.

Remember that you're designing for a publisher, not the final players. Even if you are designing directly for the players, most of this still holds true.

Layout

Your design should be nothing but blocks of flat colour, and art.

Avoid boxes on cards. Just go right to the edge.

I use one simple design for most cards I make. From top to bottom:

  • Top two thirds: a giant square piece of art.
  • A brightly-coloured band. The card name goes on here.
  • The bottom quarter: A flat panel of muted colour, with the text on it. Text only goes on panels, never on top of art.
  • (An icon can go at the top corner of the card, on top of the art, if necessary.)

If a quarter of the card isn't enough space to fit your text, I have an easy solution: make your game simpler.

If you're designing a board, make everything the same size. Organise everything in the simplest fashion possible. Put things into nice lines and grids, all with the same layout. Only the information and colour should vary.

Embellishments

The more work you do, the worse your design is.

Do not use:

  • Bevels
  • Gradients
  • Shadows
  • Textures
  • Backgrounds
  • Semi-transparent panels
  • Semi-transparent anything at all
  • Text colours other than black or white
  • Outlines on text
  • Any other kind of "design"
In my farm game, the main board is just solid dark grey, with a grid of rectangles in it, of various pastel colours. I'm very fancy though, so I've given these rectangles slightly rounded corners. Each rectangle has a title, an icon or two, and maybe some plain text. That's not a first prototype. That's after 178 revisions.

Text

Spend some time trying out a few different fonts. Thoughtful font selection is a very easy way to make your game look good. Do not use default fonts like Arial, Times New Roman, or Calibri.

Also, your text size is too small. Yes, you! Almost all prototypes have text that's too small.

Radlands has about 40 characters per line, including spaces, which is about nine words.

I generally design with 20-30 characters per line.

Don't be afraid to use text hierarchy. On a Magic card, all text is the same size. On my cards, I like to make the important text big, and the rulesy text small and muted, below it.

If you want to make nice icons, that's an easy way to make your game look better, and be easier to play. It can't really go wrong. However, these days, I just grab icons from TheNounProject, or tell Gemini to make me an icon. Adding the word "silhouette" in your description is the best way to generate an icon, I find.

Colour

Always use colour. Organise similar board areas, by colouring them the same colour.

It's about informational clarity, not artistry.

Almost all games should use colour to indicate something. In my gangster game, the location's colour went along with its cost. Later, the colour indicated the effect, not the cost.
A great trick I used in my adventure and engine games was to not have card types. I simply called them "red cards", "green cards" etc. Each one had a coloured bar behind the card name. I didn't need to say "item", as it was clear the purple cards were items. It was super elegant.

Artwork

Do not present people with text-only game components. They want to know which card the dragon is, without having to read each card.

Absolutely do not commission or compose artwork. This is unusual for a prototype. A publisher will want to throw it all away, and assume that you might not agree to that. A design that looks too complete can easily be a negative. This is an extremely common beginner mistake.

I used to use art from DeviantArt, Google Images, or Freepik. No one cares about copyright, for internal processes like playtesting. These days, I only use AI-generated art for art pieces, and vectors for small images (like terrain). While there's strong opposition to AI art in final games, it is standard for prototypes.