Ironbound
Tabletop Game / Work in Progress
Ironbound is a cooperative adventure card game in which a group of heroes delve into the perilous dungeons to complete exciting quests and find epic loot. Players choose one of several pre-built decks, each representing a unique hero and class inspired by familiar archetypes such as the crowd controlling Nomad, high damage dealer Rogue, or the supporting Cleric.
In this project I was design lead and art director. As lead, I was in charge of giving our artists their directions as well as making the icons, logos, and overall branding for the project. I wanted to make sure everything was structured and in place even as the game itself evolved and changed.
While a lot of tabletop games shy away from modern, flat design that's very popular in web design these days, I thought it would help Ironbound stand out from the crowd. With that in mind, I kept the type choices, logo, and icon design simple and clean.
Sketching was an incredibly important part of the design process of the icons in particular. For every icon I drew up 10-30 iterations of themes, objects, or symbols that represented our subject. Below are a select few sketches for the "Holy Damage" icon.
In making the icons, in particular, I wanted to pay homage to popular iconography while still treading some new ground. As the game itself went through iterations these icons went through many changes both to lend themselves to new gameplay mechanics and to create a more consistant look between them. Below are some of the final iterations of many of the icons.
