Hand Games 21

In late 2020 I was approached by game designer Don Eskridge (The Resistance, Avalon), with an intriguing graphic design and illustration challenge. Don’s goal: to design and release a series of 21 different games throughout 2021 that could be played with no components other than players’ hands. He already had a “handful” of designs ready to go at that point, and needed someone to help him create the visuals for the series, with the plan being to release each game as a single, sharable image on social media.

My approach for this fairly sizeable project was to develop a template for the series and then treat each game as it’s own little mini project, complete with logo design, illustration, and rules layout. Because Don wanted each game to be shareable on it’s own, I had to be very purposeful about the balance of rules text and illustration/theming that would allow people to play the games while also drawing them in and making them want to try something this unique. I also provided some rules editing throughout the project in a process that was super fun and collaborative.

I spent some time at the start of the project iterating on the overall template, and we eventually landed on a horizontal & vertical layout approach, in order to optimize across different social media platforms.

One of the biggest challenges for this project was that Don and I wanted each game to have it’s own identity and world for players to inhabit while playing. In order to achieve this, I created different color palettes and logo designs for each game, and also used a variety of different illustration styles throughout the series. It really kept things fresh to be able to try new things and get creative with the way the different games were presented. This approach fit the series really well, because there is a huge variety in the kinds of games that Don designed for the project. There are competitive games, cooperative games, strategic games, real-time games, and lots of other things in between!

Check out the full set of games below!