Elements
Core
- List of names
- Entry box
Supportive
- Play/next buttons
- “Enter C or F”
- Timer
- Result: “Cheese” or “Font”
- Score
Extraneous
- Cheeky remarks: “You should study some more, it’s a font.”
- Table format
- Cheesy color scheme
Core element sketches
Make one element in a NEW thumbnail sketch HUGE.
Try taking ONE color and using it in your thumbnail sketch along with black.
Make 3–4 thumbnail drawings that use type in different ways.
(more exploration with color and size)
(more exploration with type)
Explore proximity in your design (short descriptions answering the questions is ok).
A game that I find beautiful
Game: Spelling Bee by New York Times
I think this game is beautiful because it follows a simple color scheme, it doesn’t have any features that distract from the main gameplay, and its form (a honeycomb) matches the overall theme of Spelling Bee without being over the top.
The core elements in Spelling Bee are the letter tiles, and I think this app is beautiful because it’s simplistic and displays very little besides these essential features. The core features (the tiles) are large, which is a good design decision because it scales items up by importance, and shrinks the less important elements like score and past words.
This game uses color to highlight the special letter in the middle of the honeycomb, since it must be used in every word. The yellow also appears in the words you type to show that the letter is used. This design choice serves a functional purpose by reminding you that this letter is really important!
This app uses proximity and similarity by making all the letter tiles the same: they’re the same shape, they’re grouped tightly, and they fit together well since they’re hexagonal. This is a good design decision because all of the letter tiles are used in the same way like keys on a keyboard – there’s no reason for any of them to stand out besides the middle one.
