Wizards of the Coast
In-House
Concept, Design Direction, Art Direction, Design
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 for most, 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 and did not translate well to fans of the characters and larger magic franchise. With this ask in mind and a selection of key character art I was tasked with leading the conception of a visual system to allow the creation of a wide variety of consumer product. 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 collectable 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 was not focused on the card game. After a comprehensive review of branded product 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 which 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. This lead me to also be 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 product, but was geared for product with a more game mechanic focus. It included stylized executions of mana symbols, graphics focused around game terms, 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.