Termination Shock: Ground-up Brand & Book
Leading design on a new brand
I joined Crankshaft Constellations a bit before our first major kickstarter, acting as lead designer and de-facto art director. Our project was a science-fiction themed RPG, with a focus on characters and a retro-future design aesthetic.
With the success of the kickstarter, we needed to quickly build out the game book and bring it to market so we could reward our fans. Using InDesign and leveraging its more advanced features for table of contents, styling, and indexing, I was able to keep the process flexible for the writing team while we started in on layout immediately.
Complex Book Layout
Tabletop RPGs present interesting challenges for print layout, similar to instructional books or encyclopedias. Tables, illustrations, callouts, and similar elements all needed an on-brand style that fit the small form factor we were going for.
I worked with the author and the rest of the creative team to find a cost-effective layout that would work for both color and black & white, as well as a digital edition.
Unifying Look & Feel
In addition to the layout, I was also responsible for most illustrations used in this book and providing art direction. The clean layout mirrored common design elements used in the illustrations, to give the book as a whole a cohesive look.
A color scheme mostly focused around primary colors tied into the three-color notation used for the main gameplay mechanic. This helped further unify the overall look and feel of the game.
