It’s issue #2 of The Making Room and we are starting our first project. I am so very excited! Thank you for joining the journey. This is week one, these projects have no deadline but I’ll be bringing you weekly updates as we go. Diving into the history of what we’re making, the design inspiration and personal stories of how I came to this idea.
Picking The Project:
I will be picking our projects randomly, so in the pile, we have 17 projects to begin, we have everything from board game ideas and ceramics to making clothing from scratch. So what better way to choose than making use of the studio dart board? In full disclosure, this was the second through, the first landing in a number we didn’t have a project for… yet.
There we have it, our first project, The Dice Game! This is one of the ideas that made me really want to start working on The Making Room, it's a good mix of packaging challenge and nostalgia. It’s a game we used to play in the beer gardens, or late at night at home when my brother came to visit. Now we don’t play as much but when my brother does play at home I always get a text asking to be reminded of the rules. I thought it would be nice to make an official version of the game/games we used to play.
There are two I remember, a three and five-dice game. The first is Cee-lo, a classic game of street dice, everyone has seen it but many may not know how to play, over the years Cee-lo has found its way into music, video games, movies and popular culture. It’s a game I first played in Seattle on a trip with my friend. We got tattoos and went out afterwards with artist, Wan, and the rest of the studio, I lost my share of dollar bills that night like Jay-Z said “Y'all could be easily torn apart Like cee-lo dice, gambling your life”, but despite the loses it was lot of fun and have great memories of eating our sorrows at the now closed Tortas Condesa on Capitol Hill, I couldn’t wait to play with friends back home, hopefully making some of my money back.
The second is based loosely on craps, the shooter rolls the target dice and the player who matches the most dice in a single roll wins.
The next game is Threes Away, a game of luck and decision-making. You start by rolling five dice, threes count as a zero while the rest of the dice retain their face value. After you roll the original five dice you have to remove at least one dice per go, you can choose to reroll the rest, and this process continues until the last die and the next player starts their go; the aim of the game is to end with lowest total points, lowest score wins. It’s more tactical than Cee-lo when choosing the right time to take your points could make or break you.
Both of these games have been played around the world in 1000 different ways. Everyone has their own house rules, these are ours. But we’ll get more into the details as the project goes on.
Design Inspiration:
For inspiration, I like the idea of going for something like the classic Bicycle playing cards but with my own twist. This game has been around for centuries and I want the packaging to reflect this history. I want it to feel like something that you’re already familiar with, something that has a history and this is just the most contemporary version of the product, like DKNG’s adaptation of the classic packaging.
Packaging:
The shape of the packaging shape I’m going with has an unlikely inspiration, chap lips. Well, the packaging that this Nivea lip balm came in. The bottom half will hold the five dice, with room for some nice illustrations and the rules on the back. If I’m running out of ideas, I may even include the plastic window, hopefully avoiding any crinkling.
So this is our starting point, we’ve got a project, a direction, and a starting point for our packaging. If you’ve got any ideas you’d like to share, leave a comment. We’ll be back next week with another update from The Making Room.