New Playing Mat

After taking a little break, I'm back with a new playing mat.

The original design started a little like this:

I gave my design brief to my Graphic Designer. The intent was to have this playing table laid over a bridge by the river but the designer took the idea in a different direction:

Whoops! We're on the right track, the playing table is perfect but the image isn't what I envisioned. What I envisioned with the Playing Mat is that players a repairing a broken bridge.

My rough new design

With this new brief, my designer came back with these two new designs:

Version 1

Version 2

The images are pretty dark. This issue will be sorted later. The thing with these images is to be part of the background, it shouldn't take up space that clashes with playing table. I decided with Version 1, as I do like Version 2 more as a design, its jagged design is too light and ends up clashing with the playing table.

In the end the designer created this design.

I like this design as it has a nice brevity of light and dark elements. The concept of building bridges is not just about completing bridges, but about exploring dualities. The dark elements start at the bottom, the bridge is broken. The players objective is to build the bridge to get to the light side. This is symbolically about self -actualisation of the self, your not just building a bridge to the other side, you're building bridges out of the dark and into the light, and the journey to get there.

My journey is this blog. By talking about my creative process in building this card game. I build the bridge brick by brick on my journey to the light. The light is simply creating a fun card game while also creating opportunity for my home town of Perth.

Now I've told you about myself, what kind of bridges are you building in your life. How are you building your way out of the darkness and into the light?