Scrabble® GO
For Scrabble® GO I was the art director of a small team tasked with taking the mobile Scrabble® experience (previously owned by EA) and bringing it into a new era; expanding the target demographic, and placing huge emphasis on social engagement. In this iteration we thought carefully about the ways users would engage with the core gameplay, pulling inspiration from match-3s and trivia games to adapt gameplay for faster, easier (and more exciting) rounds with friends, and live regional events.
Home Lobby
Rich gradients and saturated colors provide background to bold dynamic 3D images and photographs. I used this home lobby as the starting point for the redesign, iterating around the concept of a square Scrabble tile turned on its head. Mattel's* brand bible spoke to this idea of taking the square shape and giving energy and rotation, which is how they developed their re-branded star motif. When swiping to the next card in the carousel, the diamond frame in the back will rotate in place. An subtle ambient color shifting in the background gives life to the screen while not distracting from CTAs.
*Scrabble is owned by Mattel in Europe and Hasbro in North America and have unique color ways and branding. Color/logo appropriate background helped brand the game without needing 2 versions of every asset.
Events Wireframe
To create a sense of community and excitement we transformed our Game Mode Lobby into a Live Events page. When a user navigates to this page they are shown up to two live events they can enter to compete for prizes and status and are shown additional information about what the community is engaging with. This is a basic flow for entry and upsell with placeholder graphics
UI Asset Library: I designed a modular UI kit to account for constantly changing live and social movement. Artists and developers can pull from the library to assemble most screens. This has allowed us to create optimized UI atlases that can be shared across screens in Unity as well, reducing drawcalls.
Art Direction: Visual Look and Feel
For a massive IP like Scrabble, measured and thoughtful visual development is vital to creating a cohesive perspective to share with the brand owners. Developing a clear vision of a game that feels fresh, mature, and still feels like a Scrabble game was a unique challenge. We had a core user base who didnt consider themselves “gamers” but aspirations to expand the demographic to all mobile causal game players. Any visual direction needed to bridge the gap between traditional product design and more casual game aesthetics (Candy Crush, Words with Friends, etc). In coming to this direction it was vital to utilize Scopely's UX Research Dept to help run focus group testing and surveys to gather more qualitative information on the style.
Art Direction: Logo Design/Typography
Because Scrabble is a game all about words, I loved the idea of making the key visuals text-based. By creating dynamic animated 3D logos for Events/Game Modes we struck a balance between fun / approachable, and refined / mature. These colorful logos look great featured against our modern and clean UI.
Logos created by Josue Meija and Elvis Arevalo