3 Week Practical Project Conclusion

My Opinion on the First Person Shooter HUD

I like the simplicity of this design and I feel that the visuals (font, symbols and bars) are all consistent with each other as well as fitting IP of the game. Reflecting on the design however, I feel that maybe I should have included the team's current money, as many fps games tend to have a buying period at the start of the round to allow players to buy better equipment with their round winnings.

My Opinion on the Racing HUD

This is my favourite of the three designs as it is very minimal and easy on the eyes. The font used, again, fits the IP well and the layout does not obstruct any important areas of the screen. The main improvements I would make to this would be that the yellow banner atop the rank board does not stand out from the background as much as I would like. While I matched the tone to the yellow on the minimap, perhaps this should be a different, darker, colour.

My Opinion on the Action Adventure HUD

This is my least favourite design. While I like the layout of the health bars and the use of celtic patterns and fonts to reflect the IP, I think that the black and silver of the bars is a little too flat as well as being a little too large. I think this is something that could be improved with a colour gradient or even just lower opacity black, and a slight size reduction.

Creative Issues to Note

The main issue I had was with the IP of the games I was creating HUDs for. I pulled images from the internet to provide relevant backgrounds to my designs, but without a specific theme or mechanics to reflect, it is difficult to think of the requirements and especially their overall aesthetic. This was the most challenging when creating the action adventure HUD as that genre of game can have endless possibilities in terms of setting, theme, era and colour palette.

Things I Would Like To Learn/Explore Going Forward

I would like to apply the improvements mentioned above when designing more HUDs. In the future I would like to create a spider chart and pinterest board to form a general tone for the conceptual games that I am creating UI for. This will hopefully minimise the issues found when matching designs to themes in games.