Wonder emporium Art of Play has released a new high-end card game, Rule of Three, in a creative collaboration with its director of puzzles and games, New York Times bestselling children’s author Adam Rubin, and graphic design and branding agency Landscape.

Envisaged as both a strategic game, and one for the whole family, the design facilitates a Gin-inspired style of play, it is vibrant and bold, and has rules that are easy enough for young children to understand, as well as a more devious strategic element for older players. Aesthetically, Art of Play wanted the game to avoid common tropes and become a plaything that felt more like a design-object.

The challenges of play

Design and branding agency Landscape provided an aesthetic system that was in equal parts fun, beautiful, and simple.

Adam Weiss, Founder & Creative Director at Landscape, explains: “A card game presents a particular set of design challenges to solve. For example, colors need to contrast well enough so that players can see the shapes clearly under dimly lit gaming light. In addition, when fanning out the cards in your hand, you need to be equipped to take stock of the character of all your cards. The symbols need to be both simple and distinct enough from one another to be discerned quickly. You also need to ask yourself, ‘Are the symbols universal? Can the game transcend language?’”

To further refine the mechanics of play and design, Landscape and Art of Play – an online store that curates amusements and curiosities from around the globe – invested a great deal of time experimenting, prototyping and inviting player feedback.

A purposeful yet magical design

The final design feels bold, bright, and shows potential to become a new classic. Primary colours, a single typeface and weight throughout, and shapes that are widely accessible, expand the game’s appeal broadly. Neither austere nor irreverent but purposefully designed for play. The fabrication of the cards and packaging offer a seductive tactile experience. The storage box is soft to the touch, and features vibrantly printed and varnished shapes, and the cards are smooth but sturdy, with that familiar snap and spring that makes a perfect shuffle so satisfying.

Landscape also designed the packaging and e-commerce microsite to accompany the game’s release.

Adam Rubin, Director of Puzzles and Games at Art of Play, says: “We like to say that epiphanies await the curious mind. A good game, a unique amusement, is physical proof of our claim. The more playfully we approach things like life, work, or creativity, the more we find joy and beauty in the world. We try to share that spark of astonishment with every object in our shop and Rule of Three is a great example of that ethos. A box of playing cards can unleash a shared social experience that is exciting, hilarious, or dramatic enough to create lasting memories for a group of people. We think that is pretty magical.”