Often, it's hard for students to dust off the long Christmas break, so to speak, when returning to school. For Career & Technology Students in Practicum of Graphic Design, we immediately began a Game Board Design project to generate early communication, interactivity and get those creative brain cells back to work. We call it 'synaptogenesis'. The practice of making different synapses in the brain wake up by doing something completely out of the ordinary.
First, students immersed themselves into a few board game promotional videos to generate interest. Next, students were given a quick article to read and discuss concerning market data on board game sales. Board game sales in 2021 were about $12.5 million domestically. Market data shows an increase to $25 million by 2030. The question posed to students after this article was the inevitable, "why?" Collectively, student's answers pointed towards people wanting connection, authenticity and a taste of the past, again in a time where those seem to be slipping away. Others stated that being removed from 2020, people truly want to enjoy others' company in a real-life situation, as oppose to online.
With this preface, we analyzed existing board games as a group. Students studied, and compared and contrasted game board pieces, the use of cards vs no cards, length of the game, the style of games and the effort to win. Students were asked to write a quick synopsis on what they would change about the games.
Afterwards, we took time to discuss as a group what a new custom board game would look like, be titled and be played. Once each student had an idea, we created a plan for each of them to create a custom board game using Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign and Autodesk 3DS Max. We can't wait to see the results of the year's first project!
For more on the program, please visit Graphic Design and Multimedia Arts
