I think I side with most board gamers when saying that the mechanics and the theme are the two most important parts of any board game. That being said, why are there still good great games that still have such poor graphic design and/or illustration? The game I'm going to talk about, in particular, is Terraforming Mars.
As designers, we’ve all done jobs we didn’t like; whether it be setting up files to be printed on stickers (that was me), design tee shirts by smashing together our company’s already supplied vector files (also me), or help a company make prettier Power Point templates (you guessed it: me once again). In the beginning, most graphic designers must “bite the bullet” in the hopes of someday getting to a point where they can be choosy with their projects. I think I have made it to this point, which leads me to the subject of Designer Integrity...
I went to Board Game Republic (it's a board game pub in Denver) over the weekend and we played Mysterium and Santorini. Both of these games were very good, but what stuck out for me with Santorini how much is packed into this game that is relatively small and super easy to learn...
I ran a Kickstarter, last July, for my board game: Bushido Breaker. This was a bit of a fool's endeavor, given the fact that I allotted myself approximately six months from the start of designing and publishing my first ever board game - to researching and starting the Kickstarter. The most beneficial part of my research was finding what so many other Kickstarters had done wrong. That being said, I still did some stuff poorly...