Iron Tyrants
2011
Description
Iron Tyrants is a tabletop wargame in which players command forces of 50-foot-tall robotic war machines to conquer a world of the far future. I did logo design, cover design, page layout, typesetting, and technical illustration for the core rulebook.
Fields
Print Design, Graphic Design, Illustration
  • Iron Tyrants
    Logo Design, Cover Design, Page Layout, Typesetting, Technical Illustration
  • Iron Tyrants is a tabletop wargame in which players command forces of 50-foot-tall robotic war machines to conquer a world of the far future.

    The design aesthetic was intended to have a 1980s retro-futuristic feel reminiscent of the movies, TV shows, and video games of that era: Tron, Transformers, Metal Gear, and such.
  • The logo type was hand-crafted to capture that retro-futuristic feel and to match the reference illustrations that illustrator Keith Curtis had created for the "Mechs" (the giant robots).
  • The cover art, created by illustrator David Bednar, was striking enough that I left the design minimal. I felt the logo, tagline, and author were the only relevant things to include so that the purpose of the book was clear, and I otherwise just let the big mech do the talking.
  • I also did all of the interior page layout and technical illustration. Some examples:
  • Since the book is essentially an instruction manual for a game, clarity were legibility paramount. Page layout was kept clean with only enough ornamentation to reinforce the general aesthetic. Typography and grid are used to create a clear and consistent visual hierarchy; in other words, it's easy to see what is important on a page, which makes the book easy to read and reference. (The fonts used were Orbitron for large headings and Universe for body copy.)

    Many sections in book called for an explanatory illustration. I created most of these, including all of the illustrations in the spreads above.