A person plays to relax and to take a break from serious life. Traces of the oldest board games date back millennia, and are still relevant in the modern world. From traditional ones that have evolved throughout history, without a known inventor, owned by everyone, to newer, proprietary games, with a well-known author and licensed. Board games attract people as they encourage competition, offer an intellectual challenge and thus stimulate. They offer an escape from reality, a stressful everyday life, and the opportunity for the player to take on another life role for a while, in parallel reality.
Every child needs to play in order to learn. Games influence children’s development and learning with its spontaneity, activity, variability, dynamics, freedom, and emotional coloration. In the game, children learn social skills, empathy, develop team spirit, competition and, last but not least, have fun. In such an atmosphere, they are more motivated to learn, so I designed a board game for teaching art elements, through which students will be able to independently acquire and consolidate knowledge, while having fun.
Art elements light-dark, colour, point, line, shape, surface and space are the smallest, basic units in artistic expression. Light differences are a condition for perceiving any artistic element. In the light-dark art element, the power of light is in the foreground, and in colour, the colour of light. The point captures and stops our gaze on the artwork, but when we string the points together and our eyes move from one to the other, we perceive the line. With each artistic creation, we realize a shape that occupies a certain surface or space.
I included the theme of art elements in the board game in the artistic sense and with questions that the players answer. I designed a game board with stations that represent art elements, game figures that also symbolize art elements, and game cards with questions and tasks to consolidate knowledge on this topic. The game is one of the themed board games, but it is also a complex racing game in which the player, who brings his figure to the finish line first, wins. On the way to the goal, the player has to answer questions about art elements and thus gain knowledge while playing and socializing.
When designing the board for the board game, I chose blue and yellow as the main colours, which are repeated in all elements of the game. The colours thus create a warm cool contrast. While planning the path on the game board, I decided for more organic shapes to contribute to the feeling of playfulness.
With a board game, especially for children, but also for everyone else, I offer a fun way of learning and consolidating knowledge about art elements. While designing, I paid special attention to the fact that the game will really work as a board game, not just as a learning tool, and at the same time it will motivate students to acquire knowledge of art elements.
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