A little less than two years ago, a crazy idea was born in four minds that were completely passionate about the Rising Constellation (or RC for short) game universe. Beyond the game mechanics, our companions wished to confront a style exercise: transpose “The Art of War”, told by the fine strategist Sun Tzu – to this completely fictional universe, spread out millennia before our present.
At the very beginning, it was a “small” file made with a text editor – with the air of Web 2.0, in collaboration with the different members of the association founders.
One thing led to another and we tried to give this document a little more character. As I appreciate beautiful things, I took the initiative to format it. My wish was to make it pleasant to read… and to show and see.
After several hours of workshops, exchanges, inspiration research (and also liters of tea and coffee), it is on September 8th, 2021 that we finished the first prototype of the work. If this one was not to leave the private circle – not less proud of the result – and in front of the infatuation of the community of the game, we wished to revise our formula to be able to diffuse it publicly.
At the same time, and on the strength of our first experience, the four diehards set about creating the A.R.K.’s first codex. As our work progressed, we revised not only our methodology but also our approach: we no longer talk about the codex, but about universes.
Personally, I found the notion of “Codex” a little too limiting, from the point of view of content and publications, which seemed to me to correspond neither to the desired orientation (several books), nor to the dynamics of the game (evolving content over time). When we talk about the notion of a Codex, we usually talk about a reference book – this one being regularly reissued with supplements. For our part, and to simplify the process and the “maintainability”, we wanted to bring the evolution in the form of complementary volumes.
While working on this new content, and in light of these changes, we felt it was important to bring more consistency to the layout itself. Typography, page structure, illustrations, sequences, choice and standardization of colors – all elements that had to be able to highlight the content – but also to be easily adaptable to the different factions.
The first prototype of the Art of War focused on three colors: black, white and yellow A.R.K. Based on this prototype and the needs of the model of volume 1 of the A.R.K., I proceeded to a change on the main color which was until then, the black.
The alternative color chosen is the one that comes closest to the Galaxy One’s gazette, which is slightly tinged with blue.
The white used as a secondary color was darkened, less aggressive for the eyes on the digital version and hamonizing better with the whole.
Finally, the secondary color as well as the highlight color (A.R.K. yellow) have been declined to deepen the palette. This allows for more flexibility in the creation of logos and/or diagrams.
There’s still a long way to go before the first two volumes of the A.R.K. universe hit your shelf. And with the printing of additional prototypes, this color chart may still evolve slightly (you have no idea how pain it is to juggle RGB/CMYK color profiles). However, I think we’ve got this one down to a fine line and as you can see, it can be easily adapted!
