Mistakes in Card Layout - 4 More Points

This is a collection of other common mistakes made when laying out cards for board games, to end this series on the blog.

1. Low contrast. If you have gray text on light gray background it is going to be hard to read. Make sure you use high contrasting colors between your text and the text background. White on black or black on white is the best.

2. Not enough White Space. White space is the gap between the edge of your text and the box it is in or the sheet it is on. When there is too little, your eye will "catch" on the bounding box, and make reading slower.

The text is too close to the bounding box on this card from Smash Up. They also centered the text which additionally slows down the reading and comprehension.

3. Text Background box over graphics is too transparent. So the fun graphic you put behind the text box shows... but also interferes with the text. Make the box opaque or only very slightly transparent. The goal is the most readable text.

This card from the Resident Evil deck building game is a good example of a transparent text box behind text, done right. They have the right side, where there is no text, more see-through than the middle, where the text is.

One other problem with the layout is: title not at the top. It would increase the immersive feel to have "Jill Valentine" at the top of the card, especially instead of "[Character]" which is dull as well as useless to have there.

This card is never used in a hand of cards, otherwise I would say it has a full bleed problem. See my next point.

4. Full bleeds! This is when the graphic on the card goes all the way to the edge of the card, instead of being interrupted by a border of some kind. It sure looks nice, but it blurs where the edge of the card is, and can result in making it hard to differentiate between individual cards, especially from the back when they are overlapping. If your cards are always face up on the board, and never overlapping, maybe this is ok, but if they are overlapping, held in a hand multiples at a time, then it is not. If you HAVE to have the image go to the card edge, at least put a pseudo border around the edge by darkening or lightening the image there.

 

These cards from Thunderstone Quest illustrate my point. See the middle left of the top card? Very hard to find the edge between it and the card below it, so it becomes a usability issue in terms of differentiating and picking up. But the white text on blue background has good contrast.

See what a solid border does to differentiate the cards? From Magic the Gathering.

 

See the other entries in this series: 

Mistakes in card layout - Titles not at the top! 

Mistakes in card layout - Centered Text

Mistakes in card layout - Mixing symbols and text

Mistakes in Card Layout - Mixing symbols and text

You've seen those cards. You've tried to read them before the rulebook. You've been mid-game and stuttered over them.

They look like this:

Take 1 @ to activate & as long as you have the %.

An you go, "Uh, take one, um, round thingie, a coin maybe? to activate a squiggle as long as you have something that looks like a slash. Maybe zap power or something?" And no one gets it!

Mixing symbols inline in text is a bad idea, because visual symbols are more ambiguous than text and they are harder to draw definitely. It actually slows down comprehension, and reading, and elegance. The more symbols you have in the game, the worse it is if you mix text and symbols.

Having symbols on a separate line, or a sidebar alongside the text is fine, because the words help define the symbols, and when they are clearly defined in people's mind from play then they can use the symbols as a shorthand, possibly.

Having symbols count as their own thing outside a sentence is fine.

Also naming something is part of creating a feeling and theme in your game and when people don't know the name, and go around calling it "thingie" or "zap power", it undermines the hard work you did to make the game how you want it.

I noticed while doing the research for this, that is a mistake that most professionals are not making, but many beginners are making.

Good examples of text and symbols together:

From Terraforming Mars. Separate lines for symbols and text. Well done. The text defines precisely what those symbols above it mean. After a while of playing the game, you will be able to read the symbols.

Examples of bad mixing text and symbols:

If you have a wound, +2, um, manhole covers? bottlecaps? I'm not sure. If it is a disease, also take 1 something totally undefinable. There are a lot of other mistakes on this card besides the mixing text and symbols. From Thunderstone Quest.

From Runebound third edition. There are too many weird symbols mixed in the text. I can guess some of the meaning, but would like it to be clearer. They could have put a box around the costs (2 zappies) to separate it visually, and that part would be fixed. Good things they did: title at the top, left aligned text in the reading area, and a border to the whole card.

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Previous posts in this series about mistakes in card layout:
Centered Text
Titles Not at the Top

Mistakes in Card Layout - Titles not at the top!

Continuing the series about card layout in board game cards, we come to Titles not being at the top of the card. They should be, if the card is ever in a player's hand and there is more than one card. Also, it is the most prominent position on a card, and usually putting a title at the top helps to solidify its identity. Occasionally a picture there will do that. But most often if the title is not at the top, the identity is more vague.

Here are some visual examples:

A stack of cards from Mage Knight. What the heck are those cards below the ice bolt? When I play the game I never refer to the cards by name, since the name is not available to be visually focused on most of the time. Thus the thematic identity of the cards is weaker. Too bad. I love Mage Knight!

A stack of Magic the Gathering cards. You can tell what the lower cards are. I always refer to these by name when playing. Much stronger thematic identity. And usability in a hand of cards.

If a card is never in a player's hand of cards, there is more leeway:

Units in Mage Knight are played to the table, so they look nice and are perfectly usable. And their identity works because you can see the name and picture at the same time.

Check out the previous entry in this series:
Mistakes in Card Layout - Centered Text

And the next one:
Mixing Symbols and Text

Mistakes in Card Layout - Centered Text

Centered text is harder to read, especially in a block. It slows down people's interpretation slightly, and that adds to the inelegance of the game and to the cognitive load and eye strain. Don't do it, except maybe in one line titles of cards or headings.

Indentations from the left justification line cause a pause in the flow of the reading. That is why new paragraphs are started that way. An empty line between text lines also causes a pause. You don't want a pause in the middle of your sentences or paragraphs.

Here are some good examples of left-justified text:

Lightning Bolt from m10 Edition of Magic the Gathering.

Thunderstone Advance card. They fixed the text alignment! (See old card in bad examples below.) I don't like other things about this card, but that's another blog entry.

Here's some examples of center-justified text:

Lightning Bolt from m11 Edition of Magic the Gathering. What happened?

Older Thunderstone card.

A card from Mage Knight. That game has enough going on! It would be a little easier to process if the card text was left justified. I think it is a great game, despite layout flaws.

From Love Letter. It seems it is a common mistake, even with prominent publishers and games.

From Smash Up. This card suffers from many other mistakes I will cover in other blog entries, including hard to read fonts, lack of whitespace, and full bleed graphics (usually a flaw, really, the way it is done).

Next in this series:
Mistakes in Card Layout - Titles not at the top!
Mixing Text and Symbols