How Great Game UI Supports the World, Story, and Brand

A player can spend hours looking at a game’s interface without ever thinking about who designed it.

That is usually a good sign.

Billy Garretsen has spent more than 20 years working across UX, UI, branding, illustration, animation, and game design. During his ten years with Airship Syndicate, he contributed to games including Battle Chasers: Nightwar, Darksiders Genesis, Ruined King, and Wayfinder. Today, he oversees UX and branding across the studio’s projects.

In this interview, Billy explains how UI becomes part of the game world, how UX and visual style work together, and what young designers should understand before entering the industry.

↓ UI/UX work by Billy Garretsen at Airship Syndicate

MAIN TOPICS

Game UI/UX
Game Interface Design
Visual Storytelling
Game Branding
Player Experience
UI Readability
UX Design
Game Development

Interview

With Airship Syndicate Director of UX & Brand Billy Garretsen

Q: When does UI feel like part of the game world rather than something placed on top of it?

What makes an interface fit naturally into the world, tone, and visual style of a game?

UI is a marriage of game design and art direction that lives in the spaces between the core gameplay and storytelling beats. It should provide the player with clear feedback and guidance so that the overall game experience feels smooth and tonally consistent.

↓ UI/UX work by Billy Garretsen at Airship Syndicate

I think the best UI feels like a natural extension of the game world. This can be accomplished by understanding the brand identity which permeates through the environment and characters, and carry it into the UI.

If the UI gets too far away from that core identity it can become distracting, break immersion and hurt the player experience.

Q: How do you balance a strong visual style with making the interface clear and easy to use?

A beautiful interface can still confuse players. How do you know when the design supports the experience and when it starts getting in the way?

Most games will present a player with high concentration periods requiring fast decisions followed by down time where they can be more relaxed. A beautiful UI will get in the way if it goes against that flow.

↓ UI/UX work by Billy Garretsen at Airship Syndicate

Readability and responsiveness are the most important factors over style. The best UI artists can work subtle visual motifs into otherwise very straightforward information and punctuate important beats with flair. In the moments between high concentration gameplay the UI can take focus, being given the space to be more artistic and visually dominant. Character loadout screens, skill trees, journals, etc are all great places for the UI to provide the aesthetics that feel rewarding and justify the added detail.

If you have played and made a lot of games you will develop an intuition that helps you know when your interface is working well and where it could be improved.

Good UI typically doesn’t have to explain itself, so if something stands out it usually indicates a problem. Games are a moving target so I would stay as flexible as possible and not become too attached to style early on. 

Q: At what point should the UX and UI team become involved in a game project?

What problems appear when teams begin thinking about the interface too late?

I have been brought in on projects at every stage of production, from concept to clean up, and have gotten the best results when I can begin early while ideas are still being formed. The interface is more than just an information layer on top of the game.

↓ UI/UX work by Billy Garretsen at Airship Syndicate

It can often steer the gameplay design towards better clarity and accessibility before committing to a dense feature set. One of the strongest aspects of visualizing gameplay through UI mockups is the ability to mentally prototype and work out ideas inexpensively. 

A team can certainly just focus on a functional UI during production and put a nice coat of paint on it at the end, but that can often lead to a clunky user experience.

Clunkiness comes in the form of inconsistency in visual language, transition timing issues, friction between input and feedback, etc etc. Each point detracts from an overall cohesiveness that can be addressed if the UX/UI designer is given the opportunity to work on the game as a whole, as early in the process as possible.

Q: How do UX, branding, and the game’s story support each other?

How can menus, icons, logos, typography, and motion help players understand what kind of world they are entering?

I’m a child of the 80’s, where branding and product were one and the same. Brand Experience and User Experience merge together in my mind. The external branding establishes a concept and provides a handoff for the interactive experience to follow.

In my opinion, the more seamlessly that handoff can be made, the better the results for the player. I think it is important that the visual language of the game does not steer too far away from the style and tone of its packaging.

A lot of good game design comes from creating clear expectations and providing satisfying feedback. The brand is the first point of contact for setting some of those expectations so it should always be considered. 

↓ UI/UX work by Billy Garretsen at Airship Syndicate

Themes like “heroic” or “horrific” can be translated into colors, shape and textures. Fonts also have a huge impact on thematic tone. Starting with the brand, some of these high level decisions can be established with the rest of the UI expanding on it.

There are endless decision points you will make in your UI based on criteria that your branding will help define. Since the UI can be seen as the consistent wrapper around the game it should feel like it is cut from the same cloth as the brand. 

↓ UI/UX work by Billy Garretsen at Airship Syndicate

The visual style of a UI is a great way to reinforce the narrative of your game for its intended audience. If you are making an all-ages whimsical adventure game, you would probably focus on chunkier menu framing, large fonts, colorful illustrated iconography, and exaggerated animations.

If your game is more mature and meant to appeal to an older crowd, you could often pare down the color palette, simplify your iconography, reduce font sizes and keep animations to a minimum. By reinforcing the narrative in the UI the player can stay immersed in the world of the game, even when they are not controlling the character.

Q: What have you learned from working on very different games over the years?

Are there any principles that remain useful across different genres, platforms, art styles, and audiences?

The cool thing I have noticed is no matter what type of game, whether a AAA action game or casual mobile game, the design process is the same. At the end of the day you are helping a player to understand the rules of the game, their motivation and provide satisfying feedback when they succeed or fail. So I would say the same UI toolset is applicable across the board.

↓ UI/UX work by Billy Garretsen at Airship Syndicate

The nuance comes from the designer’s experience level with various form factors. For example, someone who has primarily designed interfaces for web and mobile games will approach screen layout and information density differently than a traditional console UI designer. Designing for any number of screen resolutions and aspect ratios is still a big challenge but gets easier the more games you make. 

Over the years I have learned that there is a universal strength in simplicity. I often say, “simple is beautiful”.

My background is in traditional art and illustration, so when I first got into interfaces, my designs tended to be overly illustrated and and rendered to the point that you could not tell the difference between key information and background detail. Successful as a piece of art, but failure as a game interface.

I have learned how to better apply the artistry in key areas of the UI and sit back otherwise. You should look at the game screen as a whole as the work of art, and the UI is just one part of it. It should compliment, not compete. 

For Indie Developers

Q: If a small team has a limited UI/UX budget, what should it get right first?

Which parts of the interface are essential for making the game clear and easy to play, and what can be simplified or left for later?

I think its a good idea to create a style guide for your fonts and menu framing that you can reuse and repurpose across the entire game easily. It will create a baseline and unify the game in a polished way. Once you have created your template pieces, anyone on the team can create a functional UI that adheres to the visual style.

Once the whole game is put together, you can then evaluate which areas need a little more spice and punch those up with unique art, animation and typography. By working this way you can save time and effort 

↓ UI/UX work by Billy Garretsen at Airship Syndicate

As far as which areas to focus on, I would create a hierarchy of where the player will spend their time and go high to low. If you are making a game where the player will spend most of their time in the world and get their information there, focus on the HUD and game overlays.

If you are making an RPG where a significant portion of the experience will play out in an inventory or skill tree, work on those parts first. Usually when you figure out how you want the game to feel in a central focal point, it will make decisions easier as you move to other parts of the game. 

Lastly I would say think of impact on the player. Not every menu has to be a statement. Some UIs are just a simple way to get from point A to B, which I call “navigation”.

Other menus are high impact, where players will anticipate and make important decisions – “destinations”. Budget your time to polish your destinations and you can leave navigation pretty simple without hurting your overall package. 

For Young UI/UX Designers

Q: What should a young designer learn before trying to enter the games industry?

What should they show in a portfolio, and how can they prove that they understand games rather than only making attractive screens?

UI/UX designers need to play a lot of games, use a lot of apps, and stay up to date with how people interact with their devices.

Game players exist in a world beyond games and it is important to factor contemporary interaction design into your game interfaces, if only to keep up with player expectations. 

↓ UI/UX work by Billy Garretsen at Airship Syndicate

Good typography and information layout is critical for young designers. Games are constantly feeding players data that can inform them of their choices, progress and goals.

The first thing I would notice in a portfolio would be whether or not a designer understands hierarchy of information, screen flow, and balance. If I can look at the design and can play that game in my head then you have succeeded. 

Most games benefit from good iconography, so icons are kind of a silver bullet in a designer’s portfolio. If you are good at presenting complex ideas or concepts in a single clear icon, you will shoot up many points.