In support of the Magic franchise, there was a need for a toolkit of ready-to-use consumer product designs, as well as assets that could be used to build a variety of new ones. These assets needed to focus on Magic characters and the Magic brand first and foremost, establishing the new character focus of the brand. In the past, much of the consumer product had focused on aspects of the card game, such as mana or card mechanics. This limited audience did not translate well to fans of the characters and the larger Magic franchise. With this ask in mind and a selection of key character art, I was tasked with leading the design team in the creation of a visual system to allow the creation of a wide variety of consumer products. This work and the collection of assets would ultimately become the first half of the Magic evergreen product guide.

This guide not only supplied the assets geared at that task but also included solutions for creating on-brand packaging and retail display for these items. Magic typically creates trade dress for the collectible card game that caters to the theme of the latest set release but didn’t have a solution for trade dress that existed outside of these releases. This created an issue when needing a trade dress solution for products that existed outside of standard set releases or that were not focused on the card game. After a comprehensive review of branded products and set releases from the last two decades, I created a visual language for consumer product trade dress that could comfortably sit next to card trade dress and still look on brand. This visual language was then used to create a flexible asset toolkit that could be handed off to internal and external partners. This toolkit is what formed the latter half of the evergreen product guide.

As a follow-up to this evergreen product guide, there was also a need for ways in which to nod to the card game without using direct pulled card art or simple placements of the Magic mana symbols. With the end goal of creating products for fans of the game that could also become more evergreen executions. To this end, the team was also tasked with the creation of the graphics and assets that would become the card fandom product guide. This guide was also intended for the creation of consumer products but was geared for products with a more game mechanic focus. It included stylized executions of mana symbols, graphics focused around game terms and patterns, and stylized executions of the classic Magic logo.

Excerpts from these guides and consumer product examples created from their supplied assets are shown to the left.