Deep Gray

The two things you need to be an adventurer: a killer hat and damn good instructions.

As a graphic designer, tabletop game instructions are a hallway of tripwires and sinking tiles that trigger poisonous darts.

They are a fine, fine line of description, storytelling, and, of course, instructions.

Here's the mission: Sum up the game, its pieces, its mechanics, and its rules, show examples of what you mean for extra clarity, terminology and phrasing needs to exactly match messaging elsewhere, and tell a story to introduce new players into the universe. Oh, and, attention spans are more brief than ever, so do all of this as succinctly as possible.

Don't get me wrong, it was a fun mission, a great one in fact, but it was a challenge turning dials ever so slightly, leaning in and really focusing in on what the document needed and cutting mercilessly everything that it didn't.

The client feedback when the dust settled: "These are game instructions that would win awards."

The feedback from players of X:Seekers of Fortune: "Premium", "High-quality", "Great examples", "Very easy to sit and down and pick up and play".

Mission accomplished.

What dungeons can I help you crawl? What dragons can I help you slay?

There could always be nothing.

Graphic designers have a sacred responsibility and ability - there could always be nothing.

Clients hire us because something is needed to be crafted. Something willed into existence from the ether.

Instead of nothing we produce an outcome; an emotional experience; a factual recount; a look into another universe; an escape from time itself.

Through these projects we inspire, we instill awe, we make people stop and think. The butterfly ripple effect of that moment can be profound. So when you make something, why not make it great?

In the timeframe and on the budget, make it all that it can be, because there could always be nothing.

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Art Lab is a public arts initiative by Discovery Green Conservancy and Weingarten Art Group to offer the invaluable training and experience skill-up for local Houston artists to learn the ins and outs of creating capital-intensive public art projects.

This brochure chronicles the process of the first year of Art Lab Fellows and Mentor as well as catalogues the rich history of Discovery Green's public art program since its founding in 2008.

A strategy card game that doesn't pick your pocket, that doesn't hex you a slow death with endless convoluted instructions, that is easy to pick up and play - yet rewarding for those who love seeking strategy, whose every component could be described as "high-quality", "above industry standard", "quality I've never seen before" (see the reviews and unboxings), and an ever-expanding game with even more fun on the horizon.

This isn't ink, glue, and paper, this is a whole lotta love stuffed into a -finely designed- box.



DEEP GRAY® deepgray.com

Giving shape to dreams that shape tomorrow.