Funix project
Funix
Student Project
Seattle Central Creative Academy:
Special Projects I
game design
dyslexic-friendly design
packaging & dielines
motion design
Background
Funix is a fun phonics flash card game for English learners of all ages. I came up with the idea for Funix after watching the documentary The Right To Read. I realized that there weren't very many phonics-centered learning materials on the market, and I wanted to make a beautifully-designed game that would help people learn the most fundamental skill in reading: the recognition of letter shapes and their associated sounds. My game had to use dyslexic-friendly design, and it had to stand out against other learning games on the shelf.
Action
I am indebted to the Seattle kid's game store Snapdoodle for letting me do my research there. With the help of their generous employees, I gathered images of other popular learning games. I learned that simplicity in game-play was a key driver of sales, and that learning games that included a tactile element also did well.
Pictures from my Snapdoodle research expedition
Typography
The primary typeface used on the Funix game cards is Trebuchet MS, which is a dyslexic-friendly font that uses subtle variations in its terminating strokes to differentiate between easily confused letters, lower-case d's and b's, for example. The Funix branding uses Alfarn for the display type, and Avenir Next for body copy. I know that using two sans-serif typefaces on one project is a little eccentric, but Trebuchet really only appears on the letter cards, and Avenir appears on the packaging and game cards, so they're kept somewhat seperate.
Colors
The most common response from my classmates about this project was a universal endorsement of the colors. Which is funny because I spent very little time in choosing them. Through my research, I knew that I needed to avoid dark colors and earth-tones. Bright and bold colors with plenty of white space would stick out on the shelf. The game cards themselves use colors from the Pantone uncoated book, their general harmony a fortuitous accident.
Testing different card sizes
Hand-made prototype to test gameplay
Example of letter card
Example of game card
Showing how the cards are used to spell words
User testing with one of my classmates
Packaging design and dielines
Results
Funix Quick Start Video
I made this video as a final project in my After Effects class. This video is linked to a QR code on the latest version of the packaging, and offers prospective buyers a short explanation of the game.