Noodles & Doodles
Noodles & Doodles
Task: Fight the creative block
Criteria: Find a way as a class to fight the creative block whether through a game or a book or something you come up with.
Backstory
To fully give you the start and finish of this project, I must start in the beginning of this journey.
First off this project came from another class I had in college, that acted like a design firm. Our entire class was tasked with a final project that we would complete as a class. What we came up with was finding a way to fight the creative block.
Deciding to fight the creative block was not our first choice but it was more practical in the long run. We had different options of ways to help, but as creatives and knowing how rough it is when you have creative block it was a challenge we were up for. But our thinking when start this project was not just for artist. Creative block has an effect on any mind going through a challenge. You could be an engineer or a scientist or a mathematician but at some point you will be stuck on a problem whether small or big that you just can not get over. That is where we would come in to help free your mind of any blockades there may be.
I hope you enjoy!
Ideation
We had many options in the start, but with a debate and with processes of elimination we narrowed our concepts to two. “How might we” fight the creative block or share/critique ideas. We went with “fight the creative block”, we didn’t decide just because we are designers. But because we know as designers how tough and challenging the creative block can be for any mind taking on a task.
To understand the creative block we discussed different types of blocks. There are mental blocks as well as communication blocks but not being able to think outside the box is a block as well. Just as we thought of different blocks, we thought up solutions for those blocks. Breaking down what is the source of the creative block and matching the solution to it.
To make sure we would be on track and making progress we broke up into teams. The Organization team, Creative team and Production team, but no one person was tied down to any team we were able to move around as the project needed.
After we gained some type of structure to accomplish this task we began the stages of development. Breaking down the task to is bare minimum, starting with what creative block does. Then we decided to create a game to fight the creative block, not just any game but a card game. To make the game playable and fun we based the game off of cards against humanity.
We made it our own version with a new way of playing from the point of view of fighting the creative block.
But with every new product comes a new brand. We gave our card game a name, logo, mascot and we gave it a look and feel. Our task was to make this a real world game that any creative or someone taking on a task can use to help them if they get stuck or need a fresh look.
This was our first take on our logo, the name we finalized on was Noodles & Doodles. Keeping the same fun vibe adding in different noodle types and making the “Doodles” hand drawn with a sketching vibe,we felt helped with the concept of the game.
With the help of our teacher who was Daniel Herron at the time we realized our first logo was too complex. It gave the theme we were shooting for but from a business standpoint it would not work. It would be difficult to translate the logo onto any advertisements we might make in the future.
This was our next attempt still being able to keep the same vibe but it was still was too complicated to be replicated for advertisements.
After trial and error adding taking away we came down to this logo. Keeping the Noodles and Doodles look and feel. But it is now more legible with less comotion getting in the way.
After this version of our logo we were at the part of the process of fine tuning. Where we established what our look and feel was going to be so we wanted to make our logo as simple as possible. We had the creative team break down to logo further adn to get it ready for real world application, I was apart of the creative team at this time. I took what I had from the logos we had and tuned it to what the best version would be.
I liked the design of the pencil-fork from the first logo we made. So, I put the pencil-fork in the middle of the Noodles & Doodles to link the two put still keep the theme. Also, I kept the sketching line going toward the pencil and the noodle wrapping around the fork, since it capture the eye flowing from the Noodles to the Doodles.
As well as fine tuning the logo I was tasked with sketches for a possible mobile app for the game. So, I took the pencil-fork and made different variations of what a mobile app could look like keeping the look and feel throughout.
Eventually we came to re drawing the pencil-fork to a simplistic form as well as adding the “&” symbol linking the Noodles to the Doodles.
These were our final logos, we did a black and white version to see it in one full color if needed when branding. The same with making a horizontal version of our logo.
We applied the logo to a couple of cards to see the real world look and feel and how it would translate. It took some work to find a good balance for the back of the card. But giving the cards the same color palette and adding the doodle or noodle lines kept the vibe we were going for when we first started.
As well as card design we worked on package design for the cards and die design since our game would need dice to play the game.
I do hope you have enjoyed this journey through some Noodles & Doodles. If you would like to know more about our game you can contact me through my “say hello” page on the top right of my website.
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