❖ Version History ❖

September – October 2020
In the background of all the little things that we have been discussing in the mechanics of the game of Phoenix Farm, I have also been doing some digital design work in the background. This initial visual-art brainstorming happened in lots of different directions all at the same time (with respect to card layouts, lettering, and illustration). So, for this week and next week’s Design Journal we will begin exploring the different routes I was taking. to push the look of the game forward while we tinkered around with the performance!

Visual Aesthetics, Part 1: Font Design

For me, a visual artist who got into the art game as a lover of font design and calligraphy, typography is almost always a place of comfort for me to start my work.

At this point in time I had been working on the box art of Calendra, and I couldn’t help but look around for a feathery font that we could use for Phoenix Farm’s title. Of course, I could not find the thing that I wanted, so I embarked upon the creation of my own feathery font design. In my head, I knew I only needed enough letters to make the box title, but I wanted to build the whole font at once (of course). As you might suspect, with how busy my schedule was at the time, this was not a realistic goal to be chasing, but I wanted to give it a try!

To this point in time (modern day, nearly 2 years later) I have actually not yet finished this font, but I suspect that I will be returning to it soon (as I still very much like the idea of these letters for the box title in the game). If it ends up being the case that I do finish this set of designs, they will appear in a much later edition of the Phoenix Farm Design Journal. However, I think it would be fun to show what little progress I made in these moments, because this is when the inception of the design officially began.

In any event, the concept for the font is simple. We want each and every letter to somehow highlight the presence of a feather in some way or another. Outside of the feather itself, there would need to be some supporting legs & serifs of course, but the goal is to have the heart of each letter be the plume of the feather. After probably about two weeks of scribbling down ideas, this is as far as we got:

As I mentioned before, this is a very incomplete story, because to this point in time this is as far as I could get with the ideas. But, I still love the direction it is taking… I just need to find the time to come back to it and get more work done on it!

… Or maybe not! Maybe this ends up being an idea for the game that dies right here and never comes back. Sometimes this is the nature of the design process… but its also a big part of what I love about the Librarium Games Design Journal, because I think back to moments like this all the time in the making of our projects. And to be honest, there are hundreds… maybe even thousands of ideas that don’t even get this finished in the background of everything that we do over here.

So, I hope that you enjoy taking a look at something that went truly undone in this moment! And more than anything, I hope to once more come back to this so that I can update you on it again later before we actually publish the game!!

Stay tuned for our next brainstorm where we talk about my original (and failed) card designs!