What do you do when you buy a digital gift card and only have the code to hand out?
I guess you could email it. But if it’s a gift for someone for a birthday or Christmas, you don’t want to just send an email with a cryptic, 12-character code with a generic “Happy birthday!” message sent along with it. And it’s kind of lame to print out the email or webpage with the code displayed and shove it in a card. Just seems so wrong.
If you’re a non-creative, you can buy a gift card tin and use that. Wrap it in twenty layers, add some packing popcorn, and voilà! Instant headache!
I’m not a headache-inducing kind of gal, so since I have a little bit of free time on my hands, I decided to take it a step further. I purchased a $25 Xbox gift card for my cousin’s husband for Christmas and because it was a digital gift card with “immediate delivery”, I was trying to figure out how to give it to him. Can’t just send him a screenshot—that lacks personality…but what I can do is design something for it. What about a game case?
I could buy or find a game case and design the insert and print out the code, shove it inside and call it a day. But what’s the fun in that? Why not design the whole case?
So I did. It took a little research on my part. I don’t own an Xbox and don’t plan on it any time soon. I googled a very simple term, “Xbox game case dimensions”, and what do you know? The information is right there, clear as day! So I opened up Illustrator and started working with my magic.
I didn’t go SO FAR as to look up the PMS numbers for the Xbox green, but I did find the logos I needed (Xbox, Xbox One, Dolby, Microsoft Game Studios, and the ESRB rating) and the full cover artwork of a random Halo game to use as inspiration.
I started this last night, and in the middle of working, Illustrator had a moment and gave me the rainbow spinning wheel of doom (I’m on a Mac!—no hourglass here!). I figured it just needed a sec, so I left my perch for an hour to switch laundry loads, have dinner and indulge in some iPhone gaming. When I returned, I woke up my laptop and—
It was in the same state.
Because I didn’t save any part of this design yet (I’m the worst designer in the world—I never save often…or sometimes at all until the end), I started to panic. My back hurt from sitting and I didn’t know how much longer I could work on this. I held my breath and force quit Illustrator.
Thankfully, CC versions of these programs have auto-save, so if something happens and Illy or Indy crashes, it’ll give you a recovered version of whatever you were working on when it opens all previously opened tabs. It doesn’t always give you everything you had, but some is better than none. When I opened it back up in recovery mode, everything but the ESRB images were there. Phew.
I finished it last night and went to bed. (At 8pm. I’m old, leave me alone.) I’ll say that the back cover needs a little help, but for what it is, I’m satisfied. The information at the bottom left of the back is all legitimate information I reworded for this fake Tree Simulator game I came up with. It’s a nod to all of the weird simulation games we’ve seen over the past few years or so: Goat Simulator, Bee Simulator, Untitled Goose Game, etc. What better game to play than one where all you need to do is stand there and grow and try not to get chopped or burned down?
So you’re probably asking, where does the code come in? I’m glad you asked. (If you didn’t, I’m pretending you did.) I wrote a blurb about the game. A synopsis or description, if you will. All games have them on the back, sort of like how all books have a short thing on the back that tells you about what you’re about to read.
At the end of the blurb, I note that there’s a code for a $25 gift card that can be redeemed. I also printed out the redemption instructions from Amazon to include with the box.
While I was doing this, I remembered that I needed to make another fake game box for my best friend’s husband for a game we preordered for him for Christmas. Amazon promises I’ll have it by Saturday (Dec. 21), but in the event I don’t, I grabbed what artwork I could find from stock images or leaks of the game case and quickly put together another box for a different system.
Again, I Googled “PS4 game case dimensions” and ta-da! There it is! I went ahead and made my template and added in the elements—front cover artwork (official), back cover artwork (official), the PS4 logo and then I had to fudge the spine. I couldn’t find any good spine shots, so I went off what I know about the KH series and their past covers and went from there. I also used a basic font, Arial, because some of the spines of past games had really generic copy for the title. The logos (Disney, Keyblade and Square Enix) I had to ask the internet for. (Shout out to Brands of the World!)
Once both of these bad boys were done, I had to print and assemble. Thankfully, these guys are small enough to fit on a 13” x 19” (Super B/A3) sheet each, so I only needed to cut two sheets from one large one.
The universe is on my side today because the paper didn’t jam and I only had to re-print once! (The copy on the Xbox game was too thin and got eaten by the bleeding black ink in the fibrous paper.)
Paper engineering is a fun thing to do. I love origami and package design, so doing something like this is no big deal. Within a half an hour, I had these two boxes assembled.
And yes, that is Chris Hansen in the back. To Catch a Predator is one of my all time favorite TV shows, but what I’m watching while working is his YouTube series, Have a Seat with Chris Hansen.
I digress.
With a quick flick of the eyes, you’ll never know these are fake. But anybody who plays a game or two in their lives will know immediately they’re falsies. In fact, because they lack sheen, we can’t even disguise them as prop or dummy boxes at the store. But today, for this holiday, they are dummy boxes for gifts.
So to the two men in my life receiving these falsies, Merry Christmas and happy gaming!