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Board Game Insert Designer Diary: Tools of the Trade

Today, we kick off a series that will give you a “behind the scenes” look at how we go about designing an insert. 

All the big and little game designers have their fancy designer diaries that give you a peak into their decisions while they conceptualize and design their next blockbuster euro cube pusher, ameritrash party game.  We thought, hey, why should they have all the glory?  What about the design of the oh so essential insert that changes your life and transforms game nights from those frustrating, tear your hair out baggie dumping and stuffing exercises into calm, serene set up and tear down adventures. 

So, here is the first installment for our Designer Diary series.  The full series will take 5 or 6 installments, and will be based around the development of our recent Arzhan insert for Raiders of Scythia.

With that intro, let’s kick it off with an overview of the “Tools of the Trade”

Every artisan has their bag, box, or palette of tools that they use in the creative process.  Designing inserts is no different, so, here is a rundown of the tools I use as my go-to kit for designing an insert (aside for the game itself).

  • Set of Calipers – I got these used off of eBay and while the world is increasingly digital, these analog instruments are invaluable when the need arises.  Of the three, the outside (pear shaped) caliper is the one I use most often.
  • Calculator – Nothing fancy here, although this one has lots of buttons, I just use the basic mathematical functions.  Having a scrolling multi-line display is a nice convenience.  You of course could use your trusty cell phone, but I tend to appreciate this single function approach so I don’t have to turn it on, log in, scroll to the screen with the calculator icon, start the calculator, yada yada yada
  • Digital Calipers – Yes, both analog and digital calipers make an appearance, and for different reasons.  These digital calipers are great for outside and inside measurements.  Additionally, these are my typical go-to solution for measuring the height of decks of sleeved cards, since they can easily compress the deck.  We aren’t machining aircraft grade aluminum here, so their accuracy doesn’t have to be precise.  That being said, I tend to follow my Dad’s guidance in situations like this, where the old saying goes:  “Good tools you buy only once.”  I initially had a pair of Harbor Freight specials, but upgraded to these iGaging ones pictured here so I didn’t have to constantly refresh the zero point.
  • Metric rulers – I find that everything works much better in metric (specifically mm) so my entire workflow is in metric.  Everything from measuring components and game boxes, to printed components is done completely in mm. The ones shown here are the 30 degree rulers off of Kickstarter.  Metal is preferred for sturdiness, and it works best if they have a zero start, which is great for measuring inside box dimensions.  Additionally, multiple sizes as shown to help with getting the ruler positioned inside the box and outside.
  • Pad and Pens – Again, while digital is the wave of the future, you’ll see as we go along, there are lots of sketches, measurements, trial and error, and note taking that occurs along the way.  Analog is again my go-to approach for speed and flexibility.  My secret weapon is that I can quickly and efficiently convert that analog to at least a digital archive if nothing else.  The pictured note pad and pens are that secret weapon for easily jumping from analog to digital — The Rocketbook Orbit and Frixion pens.  If you’re not familiar with Rocketbook, they make a line of specially formulated plastic paged notebooks that you can easily scan via an app on your phone.  Write / Draw to your heart’s content, and then snap a shot of the page with the app.  It converts the shot to a color scan and enhances the contrast.  From there the app can be configured to send the page(s) to multiple destinations (OneNote, Email, etc) as PDFs or images.  You’ll see some of the results as we go along, but this is my archiving method and did I mention that you erase the pages with a damp cloth and are ready to go again?  Completely reusable, no need to recycle or throw out paper.
  • Fusion 360 (not shown) – Once the approach is defined and all the measurements are taken, Fusion 360 is the solution I use to create / prototype / refine the necessary models for 3D printing.
  • 3D printer (duh!) – we currently run CR10S PROs as our printer of choice.  They provide great print quality, large print volumes (mostly for the footprint, as opposed to the height), and are reliable workhorses.  We easily have 2k – 3k hours of printing on each of our printers.

That about does it for the tools overview, next up we dive into the first step – Assess Space and Components