This is a long and hopefully interesting post for anyone that want’s to get an in-depth look in what’s going on in my mind and in my layout experiments. I’ve divided it into two separate sections for your reading pleasure – one about the logo dev, and another about how one should place containers and display card costs on a template.

The logo stuff

First I’d like to present the Rebel & Merfolk logos – the only two faction symbols that are actually completed at this stage.

Most of you are already acquainted with the Elf-leaf I whooped up for the Rebels, but have probably not seen it in all it’s zoomed in glory. While seeing logos zoomed in will be extremely rare in a CCG on the cards themselves, it is still a bonus if the logo still looks good when it is enlarged. I think these ones both do, and they don’t seem to need much extra work put on them when showing them off on posters etc.


A small number of you have seen me reveal the Merfolk logo (water drop) earlier in a mindmap. The symbol I used to represent the Merfolk was an import of the nice torrent client Deluge’s icon. While Deluge’s icon is really well done and beautiful, It was just a temporary placeholder.

I have now created a new Merfolk icon. Reasons were two-fold:

1. To avoid technical legal issues in the future if we would seek to use other or additional open source licenses on cards that have our original card art on them: Since we don’t own the copyright to the Deluge icon, and it’s GPL2 (or later, I think), we can’t re-license it legally to additional open source licenses. While all of this is a long shot right now and we are not planning on ever using anything but open source licenses, I believe it is still good to think well in advance and keep our backs free from possible legal crap. It’s of the utter most importance that WT stays legal and that we never use materials when there’s even the slightest doubt.

2. While the Deluge icon works perfectly for what it was originally created for – being an icon for a software – it was not equally great as a container on our card template: In the container there are numbers – the cost of the card, and due to the wave and other graphical elements that the Deluge icon has, it makes reading those numbers somewhat harder. Furthermore, it is my opinion that the more advanced a piece of art is, the less well it will scale down in size: A complex icon will look much worse and distorted on a printed normal sized CCG card.

Thus, I created a new logo for the Merfolk, simplified it, and will maybe have to tweak it somewhat more when future print tests of it are evaluated. (Keep in mind I do all template work on a computer screen, where it always looks huge and delicious ;) It’s one thing to do that, and another to have the actual printed material in your hand.)

The difference isn’t striking, but it’s there and then again, how could it be, and why should it? It’s a water drop. There are really only so many ways one can depict it without skewing it and turning it into something else.

“Coincidentally” Magic the Gatherings icon for their blue faction is also a water drop that’s very similar. All in all, I think this is all related to the water drop having a very simple but elegant shape and is internationally used and easily identifiable: What better icon can there ever be for water? *scratches head* Because of that reason I will go with the water drop for the Merfolk, if they end up being a faction of their own. I don’t think its an issue it’s already used all over the world for whatever purposes. On the contrary, it gives us even the more reason to use it. An icon’s purpose isn’t to be as unique and mystical as possible. In this case it’s to identify a faction and, in best case scenario, capture some of that factions spirit and attitude.

The two above icons both do that: The green leaf reeks elvish forest living and nature, and the same can be said about the blue waterdrop of the Merfolk.

It will truly be a great challenge to put together good looking logos for the other factions. I have been getting some help and suggestions from toeholds but he’s been buried in other stuff and I fear I’ll end up trying to do this myself.

I’ve been thinking about his colour grouping and consider the concept of using colour groups an option. I won’t go into the details on that for now and will only post a part of his e-mail, outlining the idea:

Elves – green, leaf
Mermaid – blue, water droplet
Order of Dawn – purple, ?? (chalice? Don’t know anything about them.)
–
Loyalists: Red, shield
Knalgans: Yellow, ?? (What is a Knalgan?)
–
Undead: black, skull (doh!)
drake: brown, profile of lizard-like face
Northerners: White/silver, axe

Placing containers & presenting info

In the rules I’m working on I will probably have to add another variable to some cards: A threshold cost that relates to how many creatures of the cards faction that are in play (and/or in the Queue perhaps).

Example: Imagine we have a card that costs 4 gold and also requires there are 2 Rebel cards (Elf faction’s current name) in play and/or in Queue. How would we make the template look like?

2-container solution using gold coin

You guessed it: To the right we see two template examples where I’ve played around with creating a separate container for the gold cost.

It seems obvious enough to me, that the number in the “gold coin” is a cards gold cost, and the number in a card’s faction logo is it’s faction requirement of having 2 Rebel cards in play.

Interlude: The card type-field

The observant will also notice that I not only added a container, but that I also have extended the title text field in height and added card type info directly below the card’s name.  Using a template that looks like our non-creature template, with a “fairy tale/saga” look, really doesn’t leave me much options as where I should place the card type info. To me it seems sensible, somewhat aesthetically defensible and very functional to place it in the same zone as the name and cost can be found.

Using this particular template, I think it’s also the only way to do it. Should you have a different suggestion, please do a mockup and post it – I’d love seeing it.

In general, there shouldn’t be any greater confusion about what part the the name is and what part the card type is. While I went with the same font to avoid overdose clutter and keep things simple, I have also slightly altered colours, used bold for the name and italic for the card type (Event in this case).

Back to the gold coins...

Personally I am allergic to adjusting elements to the centre. While the symmetry of the gold and leaf containers is nice to look at in the top picture, phaving one on the left and one on the right with the text between them, I don’t think placing text in the centre looks good at all. It’s harder to read and deducts from the symmetry just gained by the opposing containers.

Add to that the fact that a player, in the first version, has to look at two opposite corners of the card to actually figure out what it would take to play that card. I’d suggest that’s a pretty good argument, on itself, against using a the first layout.

In the second one we have gotten rid of the centre-crap, and also collected all the cost info in one single place. We still have divided it into clearly different containers. The trade off here seems to be that the gold coin intrudes on the card text field. Since the coin container is placed below the faction logo it will not allow us to write as much text as we would be able to do on the first 2 lines of the card text. It seems like this layout makes us waste around 8 characters of text on each card on the first two lines. Is this a problem?

I don’t think so, but it could be. Another related issue that could also be seen as problematic is that we don’t get any symmetry between the card text lines: The first two are always shorter on their right than the following lines.

Dots  & simple icons

Instead of using real number to tell the player how many Rebel cards he has to have in play in order to use our Event card, we could convey the message by using some kind of iconic system.

I’d claim that the only time that’s a good idea is if the following criteria is met:

  1. Icons are simple. Very simple.
  2. There are very few kinds of them.
  3. They won’t be used in excess since the player has to easily be able to “count” (actually, it’s better to write “see” here)  them as fast as painless as possible.

My opinion is that A & B above both accomplish that in a good way. I love the way A looks. However, A has three major problems that I only discovered after I created it:

First problem is that it’s icons are dark yellow. This is a result of me wanting it to match and look good in relation to the rest of the template with it’s goldy borders. While it looks good colourwise, it seems as a bad idea to use that particular colour, because it gives the impression the card costs 2 Gold Coins. It would be natural for any player that hasn’t learned otherwise that those dot’s represent gold cost and that the number in the faction logo represnts how many Rebel cards need to be in play.

That is not the case: The two yellow dots are the threshold requirement, and the number in the faction logo is the gold cost to play the card. This is an excellent example of how colour coding affects players and lead us to conclusions about what’s being conveyed.

The second problem with A is that the we won’t be able to place the dots at the same position on other cards. Why? Because other cards may be of other factions, and other factions will have differently shaped faction logos, thus, offsetting the position of the dots, and making them appear all over the place depending on what cards you happen to use. This is a consistency issue and problems like these should really be avoided unless they of course can’t. The problem is that a player will always expect to find the info in the same place, and that’s a good & reasonable expectation we won’t try to change. It makes the game easier to play if the info always is located where we’re accustomed that it should be.

Third problem relates, in a way, to the above one: The template for the creature cards is totally different. This placement of the icons is not as viable on it for several reasons.

Hence, I present B as a solution to all of the above.

I believe a system as simple as this, by just using dots, could work. These dots are almost equal to “coloured mana” in MtG. Typically a card would never have more than 3 on it. Usually it would be a lower amount, between 0 to 2.

I am not happy with how the dots look like but would still want to keep them as simple and pretty effect-less.

What speaks for using this instead of numbers is that it doesn’t 1) take up space from the card text or 2) require an additional container to always be around as clutter.

Dual-numbers

Third solution I came up with is straight forward:

  • Only one container that always shows faction belonging.
  • In addition, it shows both the gold cost and the faction threshold (if it exists).
  • Gold cost is always the first number in the container. Whener there’s a threshold number, the gold cost is followed by  : x, where x equals the threshold value.

To the left we see a card that costs 4 gold and has a threshold of 2. To the right we see a card, without a threshold  – it only has a Gold cost of 4.

Admittedly, the threshold number could be coloured somewhat differently, making it even easier to distinguish it from the Gold cost.

Conclusions

Much of this is, to a degree, a matter of personal taste. Taste will matter when one chooses the way we’ll layout the template if we choose between two or more equally good alternatives.

That raises the question how we should choose between them. In the above text I’ve tried to give some arguments for a couple of my views.

I am aware that many designers would choose some kind of 2-container solution (á la Gold Coin). It is easily the most apparent choice if one wants to be overly obvious. Design teachings tell us that we can never be that. So what is there to loose by going with the 2-container solution? I think it has it’s problems, as stated above, and that it is hard for me to implement it in a good way in the current template. Until I see somebody doing it for me, I will probably rank the dual-container solution at the third place.

The runner up and winner here is hard for me to decide on. My guts tell me the dot icons is the way to go here, but my eye really hates them. ;) I guess it could be fixed by making them look better.

At the same time I have no problems whatsoever with the dual-number solution: Having two numbers separated by a colon (:) shouldn’t be that hard to handle, or would it? Most of the time only the player that actually plays the card will have to ever look at these numbers only once. And on occasion, whenever the opponent or player does look at them he/she’d be interested in the first number 99% of the time – the gold cost.

What are your thoughts on all of this? Share! I’d love to read ‘em…

Edit 1, 28 July:

After some interesting and unexpected input on the bgdf I’m currently contemplating something like the card to the right: It costs 4 gold and has a threshold value of 2, symbolized by the rectangles below the faction icon.

I myself am quite happy with how this looks. It was originally Rich Durham’s idea to use some kind of rectangles. However, Rich expressed an idea of letting them symbolize cards in a more direct manner. My implemntation of the rectangles are far from representing cards, instead they just seem to represent an abstract notion of the threshold.

Rich kindly contributed with his mock-up here, where he shows how vertical rectangles can be used instead, and argues that the cards come into play vertically. I agree with his thoughts on it being more apparent that the threshild is about number of cards at the table, but, question here is if a person – by looking at his mock-up – would understand that those were cards in any way at all, or in some higher degree than by looking at my own implementation of it? I’m sceptical it would send the card message to anyone, and think both our attempts fail to relay that (not that it was my intention to begin with, but a strong case can be built for it).