JONNO

FLO




To get results:

lets go for option 3:

option 1:
option 2:
--> option 3:
option 4:
option 5:

As we were playing with my new layouts the last two times, we experienced that the titles were not easily readable.

That is to say, I wanted to create a general look and used a coloured background, black letters with a white outline.

We decided this is not the best option. It IS when you want to do the same for all colours, but a better option is to create the best option for each colour seperately. I experienced this also when designing the Strategy explorer.

These are the current title options.









I'm going to edit my new layouts in Adobe Indesign instead of only Adobe Photoshop. In this, the text stays vector. I'm trying to get good result in the letters.


The main problems are Blue and Red.
The colors yellow, orange and green don;t need a white outline.

When removing the white outline these are the results:



You gotta print to see it best, but blue and red are still problems, The other three colours are ok now.

The problem if you don't use the same text colour is when you do the dual-colour advances...


With the exception of the slightly busy "Cultural Ascendancy" (long name and thus smaller font size), I actually think these are decent. You almost don't notice the white outline on the religion cards, but I don't think that really matters.


What, I've had no problems with Photoshop rasterizing text layers (only with GIMP doing it when opening Photoshop files).
What file format are you saving to from Indesign? (source, not exports)
I'm not that fond of adding another €1300 proprietary program to the toolbox for maintaining CivProject...


Of course, the darkest colour is the problem when you are doing black foreground...


To me it looks like you have changed the background colours to. I must say I'm not overly fond of the new Science colour, and neither the Craft nor Religion are any improvements either imho.

Yep
these are the results with multicolor-cards

No, in fact, I added the white outline for blue and red only, and it irritates on all colours. Making it less readable. Especially on blue. I see no use for a white outline on yellow when the first reason is off.



I haven't thought of that. Professionally I do all non-photo layout in Adobe Indesign. When you print on a photoprinter there is no problem with Photoshop generated texts. But when you print on a rasterizes press you gotta use vector-text.
Becuase you want the editable files too and you don't own Indesign, I'll create the files in Adobe Photoshop and leave indesign behind.



This was an error. I did not change the colors.

Yesterday and today I've tried MANY different options which I won't put all up here.
Outlines, shadows, colours, and so.

All options created a good looking card for one colour, and at the same time a bad option for the other.

I experienced this problem with the credit symbols before. The colors are too different to get a single option.


This way I got to the final option, which I had in mind actually when I started months ago. Just a white box in the title, so that every title has a white background.

Thinking of (semi-)colourblind people like I experienced last time we played, This is just the most clear option of all.


To look for various options I experimented with shadows, outlines, colours, highlights, textures and so for the inner box only. All making it chaotic and less clear.




Here are the results, and this way I'm gonna make all the cards.

This looks real nice!
Considering the poor starting position this is really good work, I'm impressed.

How about letting us see a few complete cards? I'm starting to loose the overall picture as we are getting down into details.

busy. Firstly I was looking at the credit box.





I am trying to avoid the 5-color symbol,because it is not easy to use, especiallywhen combined with other symbols.

When I'm doing this, I have to reserve space for 5 symbols.
This way I cut the lower box in two. Moved the color-credits to the left and the specific card-credit to the right.

Now I have two boxes. One for colors, one for names.
This way I can always center the words without leaving gaps to the left, or having to re-center cards seperately.









BUT, I still have three options.

1. I can edit all cards this way, just making unused symbols invisible, leaving gaps where symbols aren't. But the same symbol is always at the same place.




2. Another way is doing this, and after that alligning all symbols to the left. This way, there is always only a gap to the right (except for literacy)




3. option 3 is alligning all used symbols to the center, leaving gaps both right and left.




I've tried another option, but that's off. That option included all symbols on all cards, but with ot without digits in it. It was very confusing.

Avoiding the 5-color-symbol creates cards with always 2 or 5 symbols.


Last time I played with Evert-jan he asked for a possibility to create some sort of symbol in the symbol area, whenever a card gives extra credits (Like Written Record).
Because When you are looking over the credits without knowing all cards by heart, you sometimes don't see immediately which cards give extra credits. (not even how many cards there are that do so)

This might be handy when looking for all possible credits.

Maybe the word "extra" does the trick?
Or maybe a plus symbol ( + )What do you think?







Leaving a question:

Using this + symbol for only


Written Record - 5 credits of any one color
Monument - 10 credits of any combination
Wonder of the World - 20 credits of any combination

or also for these cards:

Library - Discounts 40 on a card this turn
Anatomy - 2 free sciences

OK,

I created some test cards, (mostly without attributes-text.) This part has not been done yet.



When doing this, I actually came to prefer the symbols alligned left.
I've made both options.

First: My general impression of the full cards are great!

Now back to the details:

I do agree that left-aligned symbols is to prefer.

The two-boxes approach to the credits took some getting used to, but I think they are a good idea. It does leave a somewhat too small area (and thus font size) for the specific credits though.

As I also think that the "box in a box" approach for card title made the font size somewhat too small on the long names (as there is now less width for the actual text) I got a stupid idea for new layout. Please excuse the ugly image, it's a copy-paste-and-resize job of your jpeg image, so the text is not proportional and the background is jagged at the cut borders. It's not intended for something final, just an idea to base something else on.

As you see, I moved the cost back down, so that the card title can get the entire card width to play with. I also moved the specific credit to a single line below the credit tokens. I originally gave it the entire card width to play with, but putting it below the card cost looked awkward. As it is now the cost box is way to big, but you could probably do something about that. Don't know exactly what atm though.

I like the idea of a "extra" symbol, and think it should be used for all five cards (as that is exactly the five cards that has normative text in §30 of the rulebook). Not to sure about it being a simple "+" though, I think we should come up with a somewhat more elaborate symbol. Yet again I'm not sure about exactly what though.

And then I'd like to bring the line height problem of the attributes box into light again:

OK, as I mentioned today, I have done nothing with the attributes text today. That has still some work to do.


I like your new approach, but it leaves even less space for larger attributes texts, creating more problems in this.

If we use the cost-box at the bottom, I would remove the color and give it the same black outline as the rest.

But I'm not 100% happy with this option you came up with.

Neither am I, but it might serve as an idea basis. I expect you to make something decent out of it (or not, if you deem it impossible).

I've created these two cards. Cards with the far most length in attributes-text.


- I Made the title-box somewhat smaller.
- I Did nothing to the image-box.
- I made the attributes-box somewhat smaller
- I enlarged the Cost-box and enlarged the font size of the cost to fit the box.
- I removed the color off it.
- In this layout, I'd prefer the credit stuff to be alligned center.









Regardless of "engineering' and the problems discussed in the other topic,

http://www.civproject.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=452
I'm pretty happy with the results and would go for this layout.



Trade Empire is still acceptable.

For Engineering I don;t know. We could make some exception for that card in way of stating. But that's to be discuss in the other topic.

All other cards contain less words, and these lines could fit in the box.



For the extra credit-symbol, I've been thinking.
A good symbol is not easily made, so I've been looking in Photoshop preset-symbols.

Came up with these symbols as best results, otherwise, I couldn't think of anything else.



I have thought of a blank pentagon with the amount of credits in it, but that's not true, As you should get the credit token at once, and it's not like you can change the color any turn. So that option is off.