MATCH THE MIMETICS
Overview:
Match the mimetic is a game where each player attempts to guess another player’s card to find their own pair based on multiple clues. It’s all about Mimicking Nature’s Design to products made in recent era.
Introduction
Biomimicry is an approach to innovation that seeks sustainable solutions to human challenges by emulating nature’s time-tested patterns and strategies. The goal is to create products, processes, and policies — new ways of living — that are well-adapted to life on earth over the long haul.
Game introduces different biomimicry concepts with the related products made on these concepts. Explaining how innovation is made from nature. Like nature’s honeycomb objects, such as the hexagonal cellular structure within beehives, inspired the design of aircraft structural elements because of the need for a high strength-to-weight ratio plus the space saving aspect.
Therefore it makes the whole game more knowledge based and includes a lot of fun element to it as well . Unlike most of the games, this is the game for 4 to 8 players , thus making it more interactive for users and improving the value for biomimicry and minimalism in the recent world.
The game pushes the youth which is the target audience, ranging from the age of 10 and more, mostly for teenagers and young adults as they form the pillars of this generation thus it is important for them to know how our past is connected to our future and how is everything interlinked.
The product is quite minimalistic because simple basic patterns and themes are used to depict Minimalism as a growing movement . Minimalism aims for simplicity and objectivity. It aims to reduce works to the fundamental, the essential, the necessary, and to strip away the ornamental layers that might be placed on top. Minimalist designs tend toward more white space, better typography, grid layouts, and less color.
Biomimicry
Biomimicry concept has been chosen as it is the practice of learning from and then emulating life’s genius to solve human problems and create more sustainable designs. Biomimicry is a branch of science, a problem-solving method, a sustainability ethos, a movement, a stance toward nature, and a new way of viewing and valuing biodiversity.
When we view nature as a source of ideas instead of goods, the rationale for protecting wild species and their habitats becomes self-evident. In the end, I think biomimicry’s greatest legacy will be more than a stronger fibre or a new medicine. “ This shift from learning about nature to learning from nature requires a new method of inquiry, a new set of lenses, and above all, a new humility.” — Janine Benyus, author of Biomimicry.
Innovation Inspired by Nature. Biomimicry introduces an era based not on what we can extract from organisms and their ecosystems, but on what we can learn from them. Instead of harvesting or domesticating, biomimics consult organisms; they are inspired by an idea, be it a physical blueprint, a process step in a chemical reaction, or an ecosystem principle such as nutrient cycling. Borrowing an idea is like copying a picture — the original image can remain to inspire others.
Minimalism
Minimalism gives people the freedom to take control over their own lives. They get to decide how they want to apply their energy into the world. Whether it be focusing on a hobby, traveling, or focusing on family. Whatever it may be that is necessary for your own happiness, with less ‘things’ cluttering your life, you have the energy to apply that to, rather than applying it into materialistic things.
Minimalism is about designing smarter, doing more with less, and reducing design to the fundamentals, it relies on getting basic design principles right. Minimalism does not mean take everything away until only black text on a white background remains. It means communicating as much as possible with as few elements as possible. It strikes me that instead of a design being minimalist or not minimalist, it’s more a case of to what degree does the design embrace minimalism. We can strive toward it, but even the most minimalist design could be reduced further.
One of this should be taken to mean that every design should end up being minimalist. Different design styles set different moods and invoke different emotions in your audience. Therefore the game made implies it all. The outcome speaks about it as a whole.
Product concept
Idea of creating a game as our final product striked us because we wanted to create something which explains the concept of biomimicry, while adding some fun factor to it. Instead of creating some designs which already exists , we thought of coming up with something new, something which would be interactive, well explainable and understandable yet would be knowledge based.
So we build up our idea on the concept of biomimicry and tried to combine it with different pillars of sustainability and minimalism. Hence, each part of our game is described well with these three concepts. Inspiration for the product comes from biomimicry, the colors used goes well with the pillars of sustainability that unites the idea for economy, environment and social. To define biomimicry with the pillars of sustainability, biomimicry is taken up as a concept from environment to create something for the economy and is used by the society.
Thus to create the output in the most sustainable way, we thought of creating cards , which would take less space and help people to interact more. It is not only for 2–4 people but even for 6 and 8 players . The overall outlook is quite simplistic and minimalistic made with muted color tones and sustainable material. Therefore it creates homely yet soothing space for the players.
GAME BOOKLET
Link for the booklet is given below
Material
Eco-friendly cards made of sustainable PET-G have no disadvantages compared to conventional plastic cards. They have the same properties and are therefore very resistant. PET-G is therefore more environmentally friendly than PVC and at the same time just as multi-functional for high-quality card projects.
Besides wood and grass cards, cardboard cards are another alternative to conventional plastic cards. These can be used in many ways — whether as barcode cards, chip cards with RFID/NFC or magnetic stripe encoding — with a shelf life of up to one year.
Manufactured from a cellulose cardboard, cardboard cards have the same thickness as standard PVC and therefore have a very high stability and strength. The material is a renewable resource, which makes the cards easy to recycle. In addition, the cellulose cardboard used is FSC-certified and attests to high quality.
Unique selling point of the product:
The concept on which my game focuses on is something which has never been used before that is bio-mimicry which stands out as a USP for the product. Thus providing the product in a way that has a minimalistic outcome. It makes people interact more with the product, thus create a sense of understanding for the consumers because in recent times, consumers emphasize on items that are simple, understandable, sustainable and has an aesthetic appeal added to it.
Knowledge and Awareness
This game is for members with an age of 10 years or more than 10 years.Thus providing knowledge about future innovation and objects from nature which would help to enhance the thinking power of young teenagers and adults. Yet they will get to know how design came in the world, how did it inspire people to create object for future generations to come, how sustainability occurs in nature and a lot more about existing designs and concepts. Creating an awareness for basic design concepts and natural elements, the game proves it to be a knowledge based game.
The game also focuses on enhancing the understanding about nature amongst people, it talks about how can we communicate about different thingos to other players in a game. How to communicate with each player and understanding them by utilizing a clue to reach their own answer. Thus it teaches a lot about life in general , and how important is it to observe, communicate and reach the conclusions.
ASPECT OF BIOMIMICRY
Every natural thing or living beings has provided designs for future generations. for example:
A robotic aircraft is capable of sensing and communicating , stereo vision, an array of mini microphones that could home in on sounds from different directions, and small detectors for nuclear radiation and poisonous gases.
Similarly the design of a chair imitates the shape of bat’s wings , modify it into a seating solution. The plane design takes the physics of the bat’s skeletal system to create the chair’s system. This chair shows feral and gothic appearance that makes your room looks cool.
ASPECT OF MIMIMALISM
logo, cards layout and the booklet is based on the concept of minimalism: The overall outlook of the product focuses on minimalism which is quite simplistic, objective and essential for our future generations. It is made in muted color tones , with sustainable material. Therefore it creates homely yet soothing space for the players.
Cards layout:
Cards are designed keeping in mind the three colors in the pillars of sustainability. That is red, blue and green . The green one represent the biomimicry concept that is all related to nature ,whereas the red and the blue card signifies the use of biomimicry in recent designs and concepts which has an overall look of minimalism. Thus the patterns made on the backside of each card symbolises biomimicry concept with the game. Green symbolises nature and the other two symbolises the basic elements of design like lines and shapes this signifies how basic lines and shapes are combined with an idea of nature to form an object. For example bird’s beak is made in green card and the bullet train and heels are made either on blue or red. Which shows how recent design concepts are taken from biomimicry.
Booklet layout:
Layout of the booklet has three 3 colors denoting the 3 pillars of sustainability. It has been created in a way that reflects minimalism , therefore the borders of the booklet indicates the colors of sustainability venn diagram and the fact that its been used as frames shows minimalism . plus its quite linear and conveys elegance. The background of the layout is very subtle. Light flora fauna in the background makes it look exceptionally minimalistic, the flora fauna background has been taken from the logo to sync it with the game , thus making it look simple yet well defined with clean and modern lines. Brown lines in layout shows the involvement of humans and their understanding of nature in a wider term. Therefore an overall outlook displays soft and muted colors.
DESCRIPTION OF THE GAME:
Game name:
The name of the game is match the Mimetics. In which mimetics clearly means immitation and match means complement or correspond. The game is all about matching two concepts from bio-mimicry(It studies nature’s models and imitates them as inspiration for designs with the goal of solving human problems ) to form two real life based object or ideas from the similar concept. Thus the game is all about matching both the biomimicry ideas and finding out your partner with multiple clues, who has the similar concept.
Game logo:
Logo of the game ‘ match the mimetics’ is inspired by three pillars of sustainability that has three stem of flowers coming out of one and are displayed in three different colours which signifies the economy in blue, society in red , and environment in green.
Touch of brown shows the involvement of humans and their understanding of nature in a wider term to create products inspired by the same light green leaves to represent nature
The minimal use of colors, the arrangement of flowers and pattern are inspired by minimalism as it has muted color tone which makes it comforting to our eyes.
Game concept, idea and development: Kavya Gupta and Malayaka Goel
Game research and Content, Game design, blog writer, blog layouting: Malayaka Goel
Logo development, illustrations and booklet and cards layouting : Kavya Gupta
