Information Density is Fun!

By far, this chart was the most fun piece of graphic design I created for Spirit Siege's Kickstarter campaign. It needed to convey a lot of information and make it easy to see what the backers would recieve at each tier. Many of these types of charts simply use X's to indicate whether items are included in different backer tiers, but we used small graphic representations of each item instead, repeating written information visually where relevant. More visual appeal, easier to parse, and strategic redundancy for the win.

What made this project particularly fun was cramming a lot of information into a really tight space. Over the many iterations shown below, I adjusted things like column widths and icon designs to accommodate the changing character length of item names and the current number of backer tiers.

Colors in this very first version were relevant to the game at the time. Those colors, however, were not destined to stick around, either in the game or in the Kickstarter graphics. 

Dark brown and purple came in to bring the chart more in line with where the game's colors had evolved since the last version.

By this point, the game's color palette had stabilized and a visual vocabulary for the Kickstarter page had been established. Horizontal axis information was repeated along the bottom because the chart was too long; all those reward items meant the header labels were no longer visible by the time a reader scrolled down to the most expensive rewards.

Wonderful simplification by the Kickstarter team. Fewer reward items and fewer tiers meant a simpler chart, fewer choices for the overwhelmed backers, and a simpler happier life for my team when the time comes to fulfill orders.

This iteration reflects an exciting mid-campaign palette-swap. Out with drab olive and purple, in with bright teal and gold! As one of my teammate said "it feels like someone turned the lights on."

The final version was even brighter than that. Some tiers sold out, while others we added to accommodate our high-rolling backers.