Dread
For this project I tasked myself with redesigning an indie tabletop role-playing game as though I were the creative lead on a large budget publication. As such, this project involved not only stripping out and reflowing the written content of the previous edition, but revamping the visual identity of the game and brand.
I was surprised by the amount of user centred design I had to implement on this publication, but it was a challenge I am glad to have undertaken. This empathy driven, user-first approach helped with understanding how/where to segment and reflow information, knowing what additions to make to the user experience, how the publication can better be suited to accessibility needs and disabled users, and even what imagery to use and where. This approach resulted in a document that one day I hope to get professionally printed, as I am extraordinarily proud of the final product.
Front Cover + Spine
Internal Pages
Form Fillable Questionairre
Suplemental Material
Internal Pages
branding and typesetting
My primary goal with this project was to take the skills I had learned in the public service and translate them to a more eccentric, challenging brief. Mainly, I wanted to take an existing piece of branded, typeset work, and re-imagine it with a more critical eye for design.
After hours of scouring hard-drives for old work that needed a refresh, I came across the PDF of an old tabletop game I had played years ago. The concepts were engaging, the possibilities for what it could be excited me. The execution, however, left a lot to be desired.
First I set about the branding for this game, and I wanted to incorporate the unique selling points of the experience into aspects of brand identity. Dread is played without dice or boards, instead it uses a JENGA tower to simulate, well, dread. Always close to teetering, the longer the game goes on the more intense each pull becomes. Unfortunately, my attempts to bring this iconography into a logo for this system proved either too abstract or too on-the-nose. That being said, experiments with this process gave me ideas for future design assets in the book, such as the JENGA block pattern that can be seen along the spine of each book, as well as using the JENGA tower shape as a backdrop for chapter title pages.
I also experimented with typefaces to strike a balance between something clear and legible, but also full of texture and character. I think the Cringe Suite by BNicks worked wonderfully.
Lastly came the typesetting, and this was where I had to fully utilise everything I learned through my job. This involved evaluating aspects of not only readability, but flow of information and segmentation of ideas. For instance, when pulling from the source document it was important to keep section information relatively close together; this would mean readers wouldn’t have to flip between multiple pages to read a single passage.
While there were instances where that was unavoidable, I think I largely succeeded in this. I found the use of images and ‘Marrow’ boxes (per the game terminology) to be an excellent means for not only ensuring information sat where it should, but it also gave me a chance to introduce more concept art and character into the book.
This meant make a handful of significant formatting changes. The original edition of Dread contained three pre-written adventures at the back of the book. Approaching this from a user-centred design angle, I found that adding these adventures to the back of the document would not only increase the price of printing, but would also make the book heavier and bulkier. Considering this content is essentially optional, it felt like a bad move to keep it tucked away at the back. Instead, taking a note from major TTRPG publishers, I collected these adventures into a seperate volume titled ‘Tales of Dread’. This meant I could have a bit more breathing room with layout, I could introduce more imagery (and more pre-written adventures), and I could make the Player’s Handbook the only ‘essential’ publication for playing the game. This also opens up opportunities for future expansions as seperate volumes.
generating imagery
Tabletop games are powered by player imagination, and as such most publications become renown for their concept art. Striking, specific imagery is integral to the running of most-any TTRPG as it gives players and narrators a touchpoint for description for elements alien, fantastical, and macabre. This is especially important in games centred around horror, as fear is unique and subjective and requires a human element to really get under the skin.
Companies will often reach out to highly-talented artists for this job, however I found this to be an impossibility. Not only am I a single designer working on this in my spare time, I can’t even sell the damn thing and recoup costs! I do not own the rights to this game system or intellectual property, so even if I comissioned all this cool art no one would ever get to see it. This meant I had to use AI to generate my imagery.
Being perfectly honest here, I find AI to be a very ethically questionable route in this industry. One the one hand, it can be an invaluable tool and can make certain tasks extremely easy. On the other hand, AI models are trained to plagiarise and create assets without proper attribution. So yeah, not exactly a “victimless crime” like some believe.
In the end I did get significant value from AI in this project. This was primarily an exercise in typesetting, layout, and user experience, but the project would look incomplete without imagery. Moreso, it was an opportunity to practice skills as a project director, like putting together a consise and evocative brief which would be given to an artist. All that being said, I would never advocate for the use of these softwares when working on a legitimate professional deliverable.
