Minimal design feedback requested (1 Viewer)

[Elvenslurpee]

I'm new to chip design and I was inspired by some chips I found while googling:

I really love the minimal vibe and the non-casino look of these chips. I play a lot of board games and use chips to keep track of anything from money to points to resources. These minimal chips seem like a great theme agnostic design to use for all my non-poker gaming.

Now some things I don't love about the inspiration:

• The font is too 'terminal'.
• The color scheme is great, but too bright for the vibe I'm thinking of.
• I like the visual of the text on the chips which balances the denomination, but i don't want anything that says 'Elvenslurpee's Cardroom', it should be theme agnostic if possible
• There's no spot progression and even though that's a poker thing, it's still an amazing design language that allows you to quickly infer value

So I tooled around a bit and came up with this draft design:

I would like to have these printed on Tina no-molds, but appreciate any advice, tips, guidance, etc!

 

[roughrabbit]

Neat idea that fits a no mold well. My main concern with these is in a vacuum, individually they look nice. Mixed together this is dirty stack central. Reconsider the edge design at the very least.

 

[allforcharity]

I wouldn't like playing with flathead screws.

 

[headsmell]

like the idea, but your colors are way to similar and desaturated. That set won't print well and would be awful playing in low light.
Print true whites and black values, as the blacks (if ceramics) wont be as deep as you think.
Also I suspect your reference image feels like the saturation has been bumped up a bit.

• Introduce some more saturated contrasting colors between chips.
• Add some padding for the font / text to the edges to account for printer tolerances (to close and it will get cut off) they can shift a few mm
• the # font is a bit to small, play with the dominate font size for the # rather than the text
• the value char font could use some Kerning or something, feels a bit hard to read

 

[Elvenslurpee]

Thanks all.

I like the desaturated look, but I understand they may not print true to color - any guidelines on printing color compared to screen color? Is it always lighter than the screen, etc.? I'm going for that earth tone vibe which I'm really liking, so wary of going too saturated that I might lose the overall cohesion.

I bumped the contrast and updated the 100 to help any dirty stack issues. Also increased the size of the # font. The text font reads okay to me, but I did mess around with the kerning.

 

[headsmell]

I like the desaturated look aswell, but you are still in the danger zone here.

The cream(1) against the red (5) could work, thats the contrast you need. So the other three need the most work.
If your adamant about the desaturated look, go back to one main color per chip.
Introducing two base colors on the 10,20,100 chip is complicating things.

• The light tan on the 10 feels to close to the cream (1) and the darker mustard might not be enough to break out from the red 5.
• The 20 & 100 seem the most problematic with you blue/greys. I'd play with a slightly lighter green only pattern for 100 and the lighter blur for 20.

Take a look at some cool tinas printed recently. That has an example how subtle colors print out and a example of a dirty stack from the 1s & 100.
In general I would lean on exaggerating the colors more on screen for print, they wont be back light once printed and darker

 

[VerdeChipper]

What color is your table felt? If you have a bright color, you'll prolly be ok with those colors. I dig those chips. Very unique. the 20$ & 100$ might have issues with dirty stacks. The others will be fine with each other. With the Tina chips I find that the chips come out a bit lighter than a screen which is kinda weird since a screen is backlit. But, it makes sense if you've seen how the dye sublimation works. Some of the dye stays behind on the printed sheet and with the transfer the chip also sucks in a little bit. Hell, just changing from software to software and file extensions really messes with colors. At least you aren't trying to color match a label to the chip

 

[Taghkanic]

1) The 20 and the 100 are still too close imho. Unless you have cold, blinding light on the table, they are going to merge too much.

2) While keeping it minimal I think some restrained geometric cue may be needed on each face to differentiate the chips, especially for the colorblind (surprisingly common among men). I would mock up some simple ideas but am on my phone right now.

 

[RagingAZN]

@dylanthepiguy2 loves a minimal design!

 

[dylanthepiguy2]

Haha my design didn’t end up being that minimal at the end

This is a cool idea! Bear in mind when the ships are printed, colours don’t turn out as you expect. You will probably end up with two chips that look very different to each other on the screen but look very similar in person, creating dirty stacks. I had this issue with my own crystal cavern design where are some mid blues turned out dark blue, and very dark greeny blue turned out dark blue

 

[dylanthepiguy2]

I think the half pie idea was too very different. Colours adds to the problem. You’re can have a very slightly different shades but you’ll still have to be careful of the dirty stack issue. Very, very easy problem to create

 

[dizzyChipper]

Half piece with a band separated is super cool.

Subtle text over band super cool.

Some muted colors are fine but all muted colors wont work. Specifically the $20 & $100 need some tweaking.

 

[Taghkanic]

OK, so first of all, I really like it when anyone thinks out of the box as you have, and also pushes a design in a more minimal/less cluttered direction as you have. Props to you for that.

Anyway... Below is very quick-and-dirty revision mainly just to get your mind going some more. I didn't have a high-res version to work from). About 10 minutes of Photoshop.

Just to give an idea of really simple ways that would remain relatively minimal that would differentiate the chips. Not as pure as your original by any means, and rather crude, but:

I also bumped up/shifted colors to try to lessen the dirty stacks/dirty splashpots issue.

NOTE: I would revise the 20 if I had time so that the curve doesn't make the chip look like a smiley. Anyway these line additions are again just a starting point, I would probably use something else entirely if I were really designing a chip.

It wouldn't have to be lines. Could be the addition of one varying geometric shape floating in the background of each... Or a different texture/pattern in the lower half-pie of each... Or something entirely different.

My last and totally separate thought... Conventional PCF wisdom is that you really don’t need a 10 chip in a set like this. I would prefer to move the yellow-green colors on your 10 on the 20 (or better, the 25), and then reassign the blue 20 to another denom — either an NCV for flexibility, or a 2, or a 500 just for kicks.

 

[dizzyChipper]

OK, so first of all, I really like it when anyone thinks out of the box as you have, and also pushes a design in a more minimal/less cluttered direction as you have. Props to you for that.

Anyway... Below is very quick-and-dirty revision mainly just to get your mind going some more. I didn't have a high-res version to work from). About 10 minutes of Photoshop.

Just to give an idea of really simple ways that would remain relatively minimal that would differentiate the chips. Not as pure as your original by any means, and rather crude, but:

View attachment 1556563

I also bumped up/shifted colors to try to lessen the dirty stacks/dirty splashpots issue.

It wouldn't have to be lines. Could be the addition of one varying geometric shape floating in the background of each... Or a different texture/pattern in the lower half-pie of each... Or something entirely different.

My last and totally separate thought... Conventional PCF wisdom is that you really don’t need a 10 chip in a set like this. I would prefer to move the yellow-green colors on your 10 on the 20 (or better, the 25), and then reassign the blue 20 to another denom — either an NCV for flexibility, or a 2, or a 500 just for kicks.

Thats really amazing!!! All of it: The design, the improvement and that it's only 10 minutes in photoshop.

 

[idelly19]

Really interested to see how these would look once printed, love the idea in concept and don't know if I've seen something like this

 

[Taghkanic]

So if I were continuing, I was going to try to (a) put a subtle pattern/texture on the lower half of each, and (b) if using the straight lines, have the number of lines used equal the value of the chip though 100 would be a challenge... Maybe the 100 lines form the pattern beneath.

 

[Elvenslurpee]

Great tips! I plan on using these for lots of different games where you might only have 10-20 chips in front of you. I'm not so worried about dirty splashpots, but dirty stacks are definitely a consideration for this design.

I really like the idea of adding more minimal subtle designs to the chip faces.

I also hear all the feedback on color differentiation, especially the 1 vs 10 and 20 vs 100. I loved the wheat color of the last 10, but think I have to lose it in favor of contrast.

This new version unifies the hue of each chip. I've also added a wave design to the 20 but it's a very subtle color difference, that way the 100 has the sharpest appearance.

 

[ukas]

I would make an orange or yellow split line on ones so that the edgespots differ more. But that's just a thought, not a suggestion, of course. Nice fresh work overall. Good luck.

 

[Machine]

Colorblind - You'll want more variation on design.

 

[Shaggy]

I want to reinforce this point above:

My last and totally separate thought... Conventional PCF wisdom is that you really don’t need a 10 chip in a set like this. I would prefer to move the yellow-green colors on your 10 on the 20 (or better, the 25), and then reassign the blue 20 to another denom — either an NCV for flexibility, or a 2, or a 500 just for kicks.

Get rid of the 10... keep the 20... or make it a 25. I like the idea of the NCV for flexibility... could use it as a fractional or a 500.

 

[headsmell]

Great tips! I plan on using these for lots of different games where you might only have 10-20 chips in front of you. I'm not so worried about dirty splashpots, but dirty stacks are definitely a consideration for this design.

I really like the idea of adding more minimal subtle designs to the chip faces.

I also hear all the feedback on color differentiation, especially the 1 vs 10 and 20 vs 100. I loved the wheat color of the last 10, but think I have to lose it in favor of contrast.

This new version unifies the hue of each chip. I've also added a wave design to the 20 but it's a very subtle color difference, that way the 100 has the sharpest appearance.

View attachment 1556614

I mean if you are making blue water...then keep going with the patterns: Red = Fire & Green = Earth.

That way we can have a Fifth Element / Airbender set

Your new colors are working. My only suggestion would be make the blacks a bit deeper, they will print light

 

[Elvenslurpee]

I want to reinforce this point above:



Get rid of the 10... keep the 20... or make it a 25. I like the idea of the NCV for flexibility... could use it as a fractional or a 500.

I hear you but will be focusing this set on non-poker games where a 10 is valuable as a denom and 20s are more useful than 25s. Adding a NCV is a good idea

 

[dylanthepiguy2]

Also IIRC @LeLe designed a micro stakes set with muted colours