Skipping Ahead to the Good Stuff

After weeks of designs from a team of designers and after many, many reviews and discussions about each design with people that would ultimately call the shot. A design was finally chosen.

The final design was a result of the meetings, the suggestions, and the collaboration of a team of people game designers, art directors, and managers alike.

The final design carried over the main color scheme (blue, red, orange, black, etc) from the Dragon ball Z game. That was something that the Dragon Ball Z crowd was already familiar with and it was also an element that had already been worked into the rules of the game.

To give the cards a futuristic look, we used a 'hologram technique' to create the borders and boundaries needed to organize the cards required elements (remember the 17 pieces of paper). A san-serif, futuristic font was also chose as the main typestyle to accentuate the futuristic look and feel.

The majority of the competition's card designs are very...'blocky' in layout and design. This block holds 'x' information, and this block holds 'y' information. To clarify, this block system works just fine. It displays the information in a very...organized and structured manner. But we wanted to go for something a little different, a little more elegant than block after block of information. After all, we were building cards, not brick walls.

Therefore, instead of simply making several holographic 'blocks' to contain the required elements, we did the opposite, doing away with the blocks entirely, even removing the largest block (the border) from the card. All the information was neatly organized by using the holographic-like curves, lines, and resulting negative space as visual containers. We gave the illusion of segmented areas without having to resort to a brickwall design.

Piece of Cake

So next time you pick up a Yu-gi-oh card, or Magic the Gathering card, or even a regular playing card, before you shuffle it into the deck or deal out the hands take a moment or two to look at what's there and maybe even...if you had the chance...where would YOU move things around to make it a better game.