I am designing some cards for a card game. It has both 6's and 9's in the top left hand side of a few cards.
I've come up against the common issue of players getting confused as to which number is which.
One suggestion is to put an underline on the numbers, but that will create some space issues for me as well as being visually less than ideal. My current solution uses a full stop (period) next to eh numbers.
Is there a character-design solution?
Attached are the current card designs that use those numbers (they are a work in progress).
I'm using Ironstrike by
@James Puckett and love it for the project overall, so am loathe to use a different typeface.
Comments
At first I thought that your 'dot' solution is pretty good, but in second thought I think the problem remains the same (one might not understand whether the dot stands for the top or the bottom?) but hey... you got text over there! and even the name of the number is written six/nine, and it's clear when it is upside down and everything.
What's that (removed as off topic) comment on Jack's post??
I saw the way @Neil Summerour created 6 & 9 in Rough Love, and I wondered if switching just the numeral font to a script might help mitigate some of the issue?
I never saw Jack's post, so can't comment on it.
Long story short I'm skeptical that a high enough percentage of people would see the difference between and altered 9 and 6, and I imagine that you'd have a hard time making a large enough difference between the two (within the square structure) without making a real beast.
I agree with Ofir that you have the name of the number on the card, and could imagine that to be more emphasized.
Actually I think you need to worry less about people misunderstanding 6s as 9s, and more about them misreading 6s and 9s as 8s!
And I think Craig's comment about avoiding confusion with the 8 is worth looking at. Typical gaming nights with my friends tend to involve a combination of dim light, too much beer, and bad eyesight. Nothing ruins a new game more than getting confused about your cards.
Have you considered roman numerals?
But I think the positions of the number in the corners make it quite clear.