UNO
A complete redesign of an old classic.
UX WRITING
USER RESEARCH
I have always loved this game and played it quite a bit as a kid. However when it came time to find a new deck of Uno I discovered that all of the versions out there have lost track of its original intent of beautiful design. The modern designs of Uno are obnoxious, loud and gratuitous attention-gathering.
I asked myself "If I were to the redesign Uno, what would it look like and could I make it inspiring"?
WIREFRAMING
The game redesign could not venture too far away from the original so I decided to keep the numbers prominent and to pay homage to the original design with a representation of the radius corner shape in the middle of the card. However I wanted to add new elements of line work to give the design a new edge.
PROTOTYPING
When prototyping the layout of the card came into play, I quickly realized that I wanted to get rid of drop shadows, unnecessary outlines and obnoxious gradients. Utilizing the grid system I was able to incorporate the new line design and make the central figure of the number in the middle of the card become more outspoken and communicative.
VISUALS
The major challenge for this redesign was what type face do I use? The original type face was Helvetica for the first card created and it has gone through quite a few iterations of being italicized, outlined and full on abused. I decided to go with Automate because every character in the type face takes up the same manner space which felt perfect and it’s also very easily read. I also hearkened back to the original colors in the first design from the late 70's. The major change however was doing a switch from the background of the card being white to black. This makes the numbers stand out even more.
PRODUCTION
To really make a redesign essential I went through iterations of iconography for Draws, Skips and Reverses, but found that to be to conventional in its approach. I decided to utilize the lines and just have the lines themselves be the icons. Their placement accentuated the corner numbers and letters as well as giving more structure to the minimal design.