Create Tabletop Rulebook with InDesign: Finding the right Inspiration
We’re going to dive deeper into how to collect references for specific projects in a later section. However, I want to give some broad tips to help you increase the visual library of your brain. Whether you are new to these types of games but a great graphic designer or if you are a seasoned game designer but are unsure where to look for good references.
Contents:
- Video Game and Film Art Books
- Reference and Coffee Table Books
- Films and TV Shows
- RPG and Wargame Rulebooks
Video Game and Film Art Books
First up, have you ever flipped through an art book for a video game or film? Think Artists, Film Studios or Video Game art books. These are goldmines for design ideas, especially when it comes to visuals!
Artbooks from studios like Studio Ghibli, Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed series, The Matrix films, and more provide excellent examples of concept art, color palettes, fonts, and visual styles that could inspire your own rulebook.
Reference and Coffee Table Books
Next, let’s talk about coffee table books. You know, those big, beautiful books that are almost too pretty to touch? These books often have layouts that are quite similar to rulebooks and also a lot of them collect a lot of visual information about themes you will use in your books. Science and History coffee table books specially. So, if you’re new to the world of tabletop rulebooks, start here to get your creative juices flowing.
The oversized pages, intricate details, and lavish illustrations can spark ideas for your own rulebook’s presentation.
Films and TV Shows
This is probably one of my favorite sources of inspiration. It’s a bit of an inspiration loop since film and tv shows art directors get a lot of references from the same media you have access to as well but they are brilliant at creating a cohesive visual language for the projects that they work on. They too have to pick the right fonts, colors, and graphics to communicate the right mood of a scene. Just look at how brilliant some title intros are with their use of FX and dynamic typography or even movie props. It’s a gold mine of visual references.
RPG and Wargame Rulebooks
And for the true fans among us, there are the RPG and wargame rulebooks. Companies like Free League, Modiphius, and Firelock Games (wink) have some exceptional examples. There’s also the DnD books which are a standard of RPGs. These rulebooks are the real deal and can provide a ton of inspiration for your project.
Pouring over the pages of these classic tabletop rulebooks allows you to see how the pros handle formatting, illustrations, typography, and overall graphical flavor.