Catan Redesign
For my senior design thesis, I chose to reimagine one of my favorite board games. By taking on the rebranding of an entire game, I knew it gave me access to thinking about a consumer's interaction from packaging to gameplay and even a mobile application. Combining all of these elements, I enjoyed the challenge of my first full rebrand and I look forward to tackling similar projects in the future.
CATAN is a beloved board game where players trade, build, and settle to control the small fictitious island. Being fond of the gameplay myself, I felt the hand-painted designs deserved a modernized look to become popularized among a younger, tech-focused generation. While being gorgeous, these designs can lack clarity, visibility, and the viability of a digital game landscape.
To summarize the design elements I kept consistent throughout my work, I focused on
1. Simple Linework​​
The design needed simplicity and iconography to let the gameplay speak for itself. Linework and "stained glass" style leaned into this idea to take complex designs and return to simple eye-catching designs.
2. Nordic Patterns
Paying homage to the subtle Nordic styles of the original design, I wanted to include Celtic and CViking patterns to ensure those who knew the game would not feel a complete redirection from the original style.
3. Pops of Color
Everything can be more fun with color. Color coding the game helps keeps players organized while bringing a modern twist on a game set in the distant past of trading and bartering for goods.
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With these ideas in mind, I set to work identifying the design language of the game.
The Cards
Having played CATAN, I understood the largest player in the game was the resources that you play and trade with other players. Identifying this as a core design element for the game, I found a way to create an iconographic langauge that would become universal to the gameplay.
The five resource cards that players use to consistently make plays throughout the game. They share consistent styles and hand-painted designs, but often lack clarity in their color and shape.
Finding these design pieces, I focused on creating easily recognizable cards that demonstrated a homage to the original Nordic and Celtic style elements of the original paintings while redirecting attention to quickly identifiable cards.
Subtle hints to the Celtic knot designs are seen in the left card face while a traditional Nordic/Viking style shield is shown on the right. These hints to the old Slavic-style design is what originally inspired my designs.
Following these design styles, I set out to create my own styles while remaining true to the original intention of the art. In recreating these styles, I did my best to include small details to create unique designs for each resource, while keeping a similar feel with the Celtic knot border and circular center patterns.
Wool
The sheep in this central design is actually modeled after a sheep cultivated in Sweden, a part of the Nordic region. With beautiful horns, I felt this simplified the sheep design in the original game. The radial pattern represents balls of yarn or wool that would be collected from the sheep themselves. To keep a general feel of the softest element in the resource pack, there are round corners throughout this design the embody the softness of the wool.
One fun detail I enjoy about the wool spirals are there are 19 surrounding the sheep, the same as the number of spaces on the CATAN board. As the first I designed of the set, I enjoyed adding a nod to the beautiful game layout.
Wood
The lumber in this game is represented by the wood plank in the center of this design. Along the outside are trees radiating from the center. The circle below them, consisting of alternating waves, represent the roots of these trees. These waves are echoed above the tree line, likening to the clouds above the trees, thus, completing the circle.
The burnt orange color helps distinguish this wood from the original designs greener hues, often causing confusion in players discerning sheep from wood cards at a glance.
Ore
Originally, ore was a difficult design to tackle. Seeing the grey color in the game design, players often referred to this resource as stone. Tackling the shape of the ore, I mimicked other icons for the shiny, mineral substance and drew upon the shape of diamonds for the design.
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Reminding myself of the base of this design process helped me come up with a pattern for the rock-like element, using the viking rune symbol for "earth." This jumpstarted the spike-lined outer circle that represents the mountains of the design, while the inner circle contains mine carts that would traditionally carry the ore from the core of the mountain.
Brick
As simple as the design for brick may be, it still needed an upgrade from the original design. Flattening the brick design removes the texture from the bricks, so small textures needed to be added. The radial patterns include houses and train cars, representing the transportation and potential uses for the brick.
Wheat
Wheat followed a lot of the same principles as the earlier designs. The color is warm without being overwhelmingly yellow, and brings a harmony to the color palette. The design includes the Celtic knots, a nod to the design theme, while the radial patterns include references to the hand scythe and the wheat stalks, as they circle around the central icon.
Development and Building Cards
Allowing the icons lead my design decisions, I was able to collect all of the necessary resources and create Building cards that reflected the new designs. With that, Development Cards followed suit, with centrally focused designs and a new Celtic knot to ground the design in the set.
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The original Viking shield was preserved, while creating new icons that would help represent the Knight, Monopoly, and Year of Plenty cards.
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With these designs in hand, it was time to take the final step of placing these designs in the digital age.
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The original card (left) resembles real Viking shields. In my card (right) the original shape is retained, while details like 5 lines for each resources and 19 location marks for each hex were added.
Board, Box and Mobile
Packaging can be the first introduction a consumer has with a product. For CATAN to stand out on the shelves, it was essential for me to stay consistent with CATAN's iconic hexagonal design and stand out from the rest of the typical square box design.
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With individual hexagonal board pieces and surrounding water pieces, the interior designs of the pieces created unique challenges for the designs but made for a more complete final product.
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These mockups were the first of my attempts to create 3D designs from scratch. Adjusting lighting and shadows, I created a visual aid to help present the product design to the hypothetical client.
Mobile was the last necessary component for the design. Including visual cues for common actions in turns for the game. Players can track value of each space using the indicator circles and track how many of each card they hold.
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Knowing mobile use can impede interaction among players, the app serves simply as a companion to the original board game, allowing users the choice to keep track of their strategy details, or simply use it as a guide.
Under the "Build" icon, you can see the outline of Thor's Hammer (Mjölnir) in it's original form, another nod to Norse mythology.
Conclusion
While this beloved game may stick with its traditional styling, I enjoyed taking old designs and seeing them in a novel way. I wanted to create something that I knew my friends and family would want to play without tarnishing the original intention of the game's design.
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By clarifying the game's resources, incorporating more details from to a real-life culture, I believe my design helped ground the game in new style while remaining true to its origins.
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