Friday 10 May 2019

Visual Design Stuff for Deep Morphean Transmissions

So the dreamscape based game is nearing completion. It's acquired a title - Deep Morphean Transmissions (the acronym is DMT) - and most of the text is done, and the layout's largely there, too. So Imma talk about it a bit.

I've been working with Scrap Princess on the illustrations, it's been really interesting; I've never collaborated on visual stuff before. There's been some back-and-forth about the illustrations and the look of the thing. She had the idea of using analogue photocopy textures, which have become quite a prominent thing. Like a sketch would be drawn, photocopied, more drawing on the photocopy, and so on. You get layers of noise and grime building up there, it's super cool, I really like the direction she took.


You can see that in this image, the grimy textures in the drawing. The same photocopier texture from one of these images is what was used for the page header/footer.

I've been giving scrap's art a full A5 page per illustration, with the header/footer extending to the full page around it to tie things in. It's simple but I think it looks quite striking.

The book's divided into rough sections, with the header on each page saying which section it is and what the rough topic of the page is. I've tried to limit each topic to a two-page spread, although that's not always possible. Some topics get 2 or 3 two-page spreads if the subject matter is bigger, but that's still gonna be divided into 'chunks' of a two-page spread each. Where a topic is smaller, it gets a single page, and the facing page gets one of the full illustrations on it. Likewise, if a topic covers three pages, the fourth in the little four-page section gets an illustration.


By now, you'll have seen that the text all has a watermark behind it, these are all public-domain images, often heavily processed. Each section gets a repeating watermark on each page, in washed-out blue & violet colours that tie in with scraps art. The idea here is that these images do the work of giving a page some visual interest, while fading into the background in a way that a foregrounded picture wouldn't. Plus, by repeating across multiple pages, each topic is tied together by the watermark, giving the sections more visual cohesion. Here's an example:


Other than that, in terms of design I've tried to keep things pretty clean and modernistic. Ariel's not a font I usually like, but it's got a sleekness to it that works well with the look I'm going for here. Likewise the tables being simple square black lines works alright here, I think. For the headings, meanwhile, I've gone with a typewriter font that I've found vaguely reminiscent of a nice 'mid 20th century' aesthetic that works for the subject matter.


So yeah, it's coming together. I'm pretty pleased with how it's looking.
Oh, as a final thing, the core mechanics of the game all go on the PC's character sheets, including how character gen works. So while the rulebook has commentary and advice on the rules, you need to read the handouts to know the basics. There's also gonna be a set of printouts to give players with plot-hooks and hints, that work as in-character documents that the PCs are given during their mission briefing. They're gonna have the scrap-princess art (because it would be a shame to waste it, she's turned out some really good stuff), as well as carefully edited public domain stuff, and bits of text.


Anyway, that's where things are. I'm probably got a few days before I release this thing - it needs indexing still - but it's well on its way. And I'm pretty pleased with it.


~~~

Oh, also, there's a fundraiser for Mandy Morbid's legal fees, because that whole situation continues to be dreadful. Here it is, maybe throw her a few bucks.

15 comments:

  1. Nice!
    I think you should consider not using watermarks or placing them in a layer that can be hidden, because it seems to me that the most positive thing said about textured backgrounds is often that they are non-intrusive or don't hinder legibility, which isn't very good benchmark for a design element.

    Anyway, looking forward to the book.

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    1. I agree with Olav re: watermarks!!

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    2. The spider and the eyes don't hinder legibility much, but the "labyrinth" behind the "Bestiary/Nightmares" tables does.

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    3. Also was going to suggest the same re: watermarks. In general, it'd be great to have a print layer of just text without the black border (what an ink drinker!) vs the normal graphics.

      Looking good otherwise!

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    4. I'm likely to make a 'printer friendly' version of the PDF which strips out the watermarks, black borders & page backgrounds, and then puts everything in B&W.
      I'm still tweaking the contrast/brightness/saturation on a lot of the watermarks, I don't want them to be super distracting but I do think they improve the visual look of the page. It's a matter of getting the balance right.

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    5. I would second the suggestions about watermarks being on separate layer; personally I'd prefer to be able to turn them off even for regular pdf reading through.

      I really like the name.

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    6. Agree with Olav and Kyana about the watermarks. That aside, looking forward to seeing this.

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  2. Oooooo! I'm looking forward to this!

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  3. Have you thought about hooking up with one of the small publisher to do a print version? Exalted Funeral or The Demon Collective maybe?

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  4. Looking very cool there. My dad used to work in a copy shop, and whenever the machines would go on the fritz, he'd mess around and see what kind of cool effects he could get from them before calling the repair place. These remind me a little of some of his results from that.

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  6. "Very interesting article, really. I visit again here to see more. Thank you.
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  7. Emmy is that link actually for *legal fees* because looking into it it seems like its not actually for that purpose, or at least it doesn't say it is?

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    1. currently that's what the money is going towards, but it's the same fundraiser as before. I should probably get Shoe to update the description.

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  8. make little illustrative breaks in text BUT... no water marks for me thanks as I'm extremely highly skilled with thus sensitive to graphics so that noise is deafening when I'm trying to read content. I suspect there are others like me who curse the publishers of that old TSR D&D visually toxic watermarking of content (and likewise think hex maps are for analy retentive referees).

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