Let's Talk About the Box Cover

First of all, thank you so much for showing interest in Feymere. You’ve already doubled my monthly visitor target within the first week. I can’t thank you enough, this has been such a huge source of inspiration and motivation for me.

In my previous blog post, I started talking about building a tabletop game company. I’ll keep writing about this for a long while, because the journey of entrepreneurship never ends and there’s always so much to share. But today I want to talk about the cover art of my very first game, my debut title, Mournshade.

Honestly, what I mainly want to highlight in this post is the importance of trusting your talent and the process. Creating the cover art for Mournshade was full of both ups and downs. If I break down how it went for me, it looked something like this:

• Defining the concept

• Logo and icons

• Finding the right artist

• Final artwork

  • Mockup attempts and first meh

  • Iteration and outcome

I know it might sound a bit messy, but that’s how the creative process naturally unfolded. My visual creative work tends to go like this, lots of thinking, fixing, and sometimes even starting over from scratch. Let me dive into the details.

Concept

Defining the concept wasn’t all that difficult. Since players take on the role of reapers in a graveyard, and it’s a two-player game, I started with the “two reapers in a graveyard” concept, and let it simmer in the back of my mind.

Logo and Icons

This was an entirely different journey. I could have created a custom font or chosen an existing one, there’s no single “right” way to do this. For this project, I wanted to move faster, so I picked a font and began working. Of course, I couldn’t just leave it as it was. I tweaked it, adjusted it, but it still felt like something was missing. Then I decided to try adding a ghost icon I had drawn earlier, and it just clicked perfectly. Since it worked, I stuck with it, and that’s how the logo was born. For anyone curious, I started the process in Photoshop and finished it in Illustrator.

Finding the Right Artist

This is always a tricky part and honestly deserves a separate blog post. To put it briefly, the most important thing is working with an artist who can capture the exact feeling you want your project to convey. Since I’ve worked with dozens of artists before, I had a few names in mind and reached out to them. In the end, I decided to work with Murat Çalış. He delivered exactly what I was hoping for, and right on time. Here, I should also mention the importance of creating a proper brief. You need to know what an artist expects from a brief. Having worked with Murat many times before, I tailored one that suited his needs, and most importantly, I used his own past works as references, not examples from other illustrators.

Final Artwork

That feeling when you see the final piece… it’s wonderful. After a few revisions, I had the final art in hand, as you can see below. With TTRPG covers, the final artwork often ends up looking almost identical to the final cover, just with the title and logos added. Board games are usually different, but I still tried placing the logo directly over the artwork, like I was used to with TTRPGs. I liked it, but it still felt like something was missing. You can see an example below.

The first version of the box cover

After a few hours of thinking and researching, an idea came to me on how to unify the cover, so I put it into practice. I trust my instincts a lot in moments like these. If I feel I’m on the right path, I follow through. A few hours later, the first version of the cover was ready. I honestly think it’s a much more striking cover now. What do you think? I hope you like it!

Final box cover (yet)

The journey of Mournshade continues. There’s still time before launch, and preparations are ongoing. The cover might still change or get updated, but its base and color scheme are set. Now it’s time to move on to the cards and their artwork.

Thank you for reading this far! One last thing: at the bottom of this blog post there’s a subscription form. Everyone who subscribes will receive a free game, Jujuman, another design of Mournshade’s designer. Jujuman is a one-sheet print-and-play game. I think you’ll have fun with it!

Captain of Feymere,

Umut.