Land Of Legacy
Scope: 6 Weeks Type: University Project Tools:Illustrator, Photoshop, Procreate
The Brief
For this project, we were asked to come up with a creative solution having the RSA 2019-2020 Competition Briefs as a base and yet go beyond the limitations of the competition brief. The brief I chose was ‘Platform For Joy’, a brief to unlock joy for people at train stations. Living in a modern city like Singapore, I decided to identify triggers in the Singaporean train system and come up with solutions for that.
Land Of Legacy was a project that was started with the motivation of breaking the stereotype of boredom associated with heritage. Here in Singapore, amidst this fast paced life, most of us tend to overlook what is actually around us and barely ever slow down. I thought making a card game won't only highlight these heritage artefacts through a fun experience but also revive the tradition of card games in this digital era. The essence of this game is for it to be magical yet fun and hence hopefully making it stand apart from existing card games.
Identity Colours
Trigger
• Dhoby Ghaut is the largest MRT station in Singapore and the 8th busiest one. It’s the only MRT station in Singapore with a triple line exchange and hence has a high passenger usage rate. The insides of the train station, especially the platform areas are mostly gray, gloomy and are void of liveliness, and vibrancy. (especially the North-South line).
• Studies have shown that the level of the stress hormone, cortisol is quite often at its highest during the first few hours of waking up. For peak hour passengers who are on their way to work or school, this dull environment is not going to help with morning anxiety and might even worsen it.
• Singapore might be a modern urban city today, but it has had its fair share of heritage as well. Most MRT stations are used on a daily basis by thousands of people, both locals and tourists without really knowing much about the surroundings or its heritage.
Solution
• Heritage Trails: Where fun meets magic’ is an interactive card game designed as a tribute to the often-forgotten heritage of Singapore. The idea is to transform the boredom associated with heritage into something fun and magical.
• 20 of Singapore’s tangible and intangible heritage including buildings, festivals and food were selected to compose a card game that comes along with a little book with the game rules and information about each heritage card. The heritage cards will be organized into 5
different coloured sets, based on the 5 MRT lines. Apart from the heritage cards, the card
game will contain 24 action cards with various fun actions and 14 cash cards.
• The MRT station will be designed based off the game cards and will carry on the overall
theme. Posters, footpath and seating will be designed based off the game cards and will eventually advertise the cards as well.
Rationale
We see a lot of advertisements and other graphical posters on the MRT platforms. Most of the times it’s promoting a brand or about train etiquettes. A brand like Singapore Tourism Board, using vibrant illustrations will be able to interest more people with interesting information about the place and its heritage to give people a better sense of their MRT station.
Purpose
Making the MRT station platforms livelier and colourful to improve the mood amongst passengers, especially during peak hours. A better model of helping tourists get around since it offers more than just your traditional map depiction with its colours, illustrations, heritage info and interactivity, and hence will be a fun way for them to get to know the spirit of Singapore better.
Target Market
• Peak hour passengers with anxiety (mainly morning anxiety)
• Tourists and first-time passengers of the MRT station
• Regular users who are life-long learners; people who are always interested to learn new
things on a wide variety of subjects
Process
Before finalising on the creative direction, style, colours and typography I did a few different versions to see if the aesthetics worked well together. The colour scheme for magician archetype plays with magical, mysterious and a bit of curios tones. Generally, magician archetype goes with a bit of a darker shade. However, for this project I also had to keep in mind that this is going to be for a crowded public space and the colours will have an effect on the users mood.The last time I only regarded the effect of the colours and forgot about the integration of it with archetype.
Idea 1
Idea 2
The Cards...
The entire point of this game is to make them a bit more aware and knowledgable about the Heritage gems in Singapore through a fun way.The card game will include Heritage cards along with Action and Cash cards for the fun element.To add some surprise to it, Augmented Reality is incorporated into the game.
Rough Sketches
Colour Scheme
The colour scheme for magician archetype plays with magical, mysterious and a bit of curios tones. Generally, magician archetype goes with a bit of a darker shade. However, for this project I also had to keep in mind that this is going to be for a crowded public space and the colours will have an effect on the users mood.The last time I only regarded the effect of the colours and forgot about the integration of it with archetype.
Typography & Hero Image
Magician > Make dreams come true > Disney > Optical Illusions, unexpected shapes, defying legibility are all game. Make the reader think: how the heck did they do it? For this I wanted to do something inspired the Legacy based stories and movies font. Nothing too childish. I wanted to go for a font that is maybe Serif with a some magical pointy ends. Also, I’ll have to remember that this font will be on each card and users should still be able to read it quickly.Again under magician archetype, there are different categories like scientifically magic or even mystically magic. So again the font has to go along with the illustrations and mainly the hero image. For the hero image I wanted an illustration using the identity colours to compliment the main title typography.The title of the game itself should be something that represents the magician archetype and hence I changed it to ‘Land of Legacy’.
Card Types
Land Of Legacy will majorly consist of 3 types of cards. The Heritage Cards are the most valuable cards and determine the winner of the game. Each card will have an unique base colour for easy identification.
Augmented Reality Cards
Land Of Legacy also has 3 surprise magical cards incorporating AR into printed cards. The AR cards can be accessed using the Artivive app and will constantly be changing its AR visuals to retain the element of surprise. Players can scan the cards and play accordingly!
Packaging & Printing
I tried a few different packaging options to see which one is the most optimal and convenient to put and take out the cards. I also made a small booklet to go with the cards with the necessary instructions.
Box Packaging
Rule Booklet
Upon Project Completion
This project was a very interesting one because I got the oppurtunity to combine my interest in illustrations with graphic design and create a complete card game for the first time. There were a lot off challenges for sure especially when coming up with the game layout that works yet stay true to the primary purpose of the solution. I learnt a lot more about Singapore and it’s heritage through researching for the project.
Creating this game design involved me making it digitally first but then make it into print. Prior to printing the cards and packaging, I did quite a bit of paper exploartion as well. Throughout the 6 weeks I worked on this project, a lot of ideas have been scraped a lot of technical and creative knowledge has been gained. I got oppurtunity to research and know a lot more about otheer card games, how they work and why they work and also on how to infuse heritage into a fun day to day solution.
This particular design is focused on just Dhoby Ghaut, a particular region in Singapore. However, this is a creative solution that can be applied across Singapore and even across the world!