The Type Gig
Handback

See the thoughts, thinking, and process behind two of my projects


The Type Gig is a rebrand of the Hasbro game Monopoly. The challenge was to turn all aspects of Monopoly into typography related ideas. In this process, I had to think how jail, community chests, chance cards, properties, and the currency of Monopoly can be switched up and turn into a typography idea.
The goal of The Type Gig game is the land a job in a the field of Graphic Design and keep the job.

With similar gameplay to Monopoly, all the twist and turns has been changed to a typography idea. Instead of street names, we have design agency named after fonts such as Cooperplate Corporation, Georgia Printing, and Baskerville LLC. The railroad piece in Monopoly is now the Adobe Programs. Community Chest has become social media cards and Chance Cards had become freelance opportunities, both these cards have high risk versus reward answers. Jail is plagiarism and free parking is now a free font. Homes and Hotels are Window computers and Mac computers.

Monopoly is known for many things, one of these being the quirky mascot: Mr.Monopoly. That is where we started, a mascot to represent The Type Gig.
After many variations, I finalized the mascot in the middle. Playing around with what the mascot would hold as the prop. I choose a serif letter "J" becuase it best represented a cane. In the right image, it was important to bring movement and poses to the mascot so I drew out a bunch of stick figures in simple quriky poses to decide how to pose the mascot through out the game.
This is a first look at the two digitalized versions of two mascot concepts. Both had great potential, but we ended up going with the mascot on the left as we felt she was more versatile, and on brand for the game design of The Type Gig. The goal of mascot was to convey a cartooon style business casual woman with a fun typographic outfit. Her serif "J" cane opened up a lot of poses we can put her in and her signature letter shirt was a fun touch to her overall look.
When designing the board shape of The Type Gig, I wanted to go with a shape that was not a sqaure in the game layout. The first option was an octagon and the second was a circle. There was a lot of pre-planning in how many boxes were needed and where specialty spaces would be.
Digital concept number one of the octagon shape game layout. The layout did not flow well due to the pointed shapes and angles. It was an interesting shape, but not what the idea was going for.
Second digital concept for the board layout, the classic circle. this flowed much better. I started adding gradients to the spaces but that was not matching the branding of the game, so I continued tweaking it.
Above is the finalized version of The Type Gig game board. I ended up going with a lot of flat color vector illustrations with a black cartoon outline around the shapes. The final board is sleek and easy to follow and follows the branding well.
Here is a few options for the currency in The Type Gig. I wanted to play with the different font styles to represent the different currency amount so they are easy to pick up and use. Version 3 ended up being the currency of choice because it  they are unify with the branding of The Type Gig. The "A" icon is easily seen on the gray background of the token.
Next in The Type Gig progress came community chest and chance cards. In monopoly these cards are risk versus reward cards. It is one of Monopoly features that makes it so competitive and at times, frustrating. The graphic design world is filled with risk and reward so this was interesting to come up with. Community chest where social media blast of followers, likes, views, and content or nothing at all. Social media can be a great aspect to a graphic design career or take a person nowhere, fitting for the risk of The Type Gig. Then, the chance card was freelance opportunity which is another aspect that be high risk of scams, payments, and projects. Version 3 of both sets where the finalized versions chosen for the game.
The Type Gig packaging was going to have a moody city feeling to it. Cities are common places for people look at jobs. it was between a perspective view of the city or a landscape scene. We ended up chosing the landscpae scene of the city to fit the branding better.
Lastly, The Type Gig package design finalized. I continued using that cartoon and flat vector art style and added all necessary information needed to sell a Hasbro Product and board game.

The Type Gig is a redesign of Monopoly using typographic elements.
Thank you for reading!

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