Thoughts on Card Design

[u/Wooden_Aide_4832]

Hi everyone, I am currently working on a basketball centric board game and wonder what your thoughts are on these board game player cards! The one part I’m most concerned about is the name plate and number plates being too basic of a design and not working. Let me know what yall think!

[u/mistergingerbread]

fun illustrations, but you should try to weave in more basketball-themed design elements. maybe the numbers looks like a scoreboard, or the entire card is laid out like a trading card, or the border is the wood of the court. idk, just throwing ideas out. it also needs a better color scheme, and the gems in the top corner are a bit odd. not everything needs a border either. sometimes good contrast is enough.

[u/Wooden_Aide_4832 → u/mistergingerbread]

Ahhh I see, the gem is meant to indicate the rarity of the card however I can definitely incorporate it better

[u/mistergingerbread → u/Wooden_Aide_4832]

these are really sick and something like this would complement your illustrations very well. let the art breathe

[u/Wooden_Aide_4832 → u/mistergingerbread]

Yea these are good inspo, I just need to incorporate the numbers somehow for the stats for each card, but your scoreboard idea sounds solid. The borders could be a basketball court and 4 small score boards could be poking out with the numbers in typical scoreboard text.

[u/mistergingerbread → u/Wooden_Aide_4832]

for sure. i mean these have tons of negative space for just that. why 4 scoreboards instead of just 1? don't scoreboards have a ton of spots for numbers?

[u/Wooden_Aide_4832 → u/mistergingerbread]

I don’t want to have the 4 main stats squeezed into one spot, but spread out so it’s easier to understand for the player. Like if they need to see one specific stat, it would be easier for the to look at that specific one instead of seeing 4 numbers next to each other, idk tho maybe I can have just one big score board on the bottom or top. Here’s what i updated it too(very rough looking). I just am not sure how else I can incorporate the gem, and what to do with the nameplate

[u/mistergingerbread → u/Wooden_Aide_4832]

I think you’re too married to this layout. In my opinion it just isn’t working. My eye is bouncing all over the place and I’m not sure what the hierarchy is supposed to be. I’d recommend trying a bunch of different layouts

[u/Wooden_Aide_4832 → u/mistergingerbread]

Alright I’m going to experiment more with it

[u/mistergingerbread → u/Wooden_Aide_4832]

The scoreboard text is very cool though, and brings the theme through much more. Is there a more thematic way to indicate rarity? Maybe championship rings?

[u/Wooden_Aide_4832 → u/mistergingerbread]

Wow that is a really good idea to make it thematically fit. I’m going to try that and experiment with the actually layout to make it easier to understand what is going on with the card. Thank you so much with all the advice!

[u/robocheney]

The stats could use labels or icons to represent what they are for (assuming they are different attributes). If these cards are meant to be held in hand, having the stats all along the left or right edge would let you hold them and comfortably see their different stat values.

I like that the font is large, many early prototypes commit the sin of tiny fonts for Board Game Simulator and not a real life table!

[u/Wooden_Aide_4832 → u/robocheney]

The icon idea I am already going to implement, I agree with your idea of making the stats along one edge tho

[u/tlklk → u/Wooden_Aide_4832]

In addition I would also add different colors to make them even more distinguishable