Role : Personal Project in Collaboration with Dario Narvaez
Company : Showcased during Wanted Design NYC 2015
Latin America boasts a vast array of traditional games with untapped cultural richness and minimal design intervention. This project aims to explore one such game from an industrial design perspective. The chosen game is "Juego de la Rana" (Frog Game), one of Colombia's most popular traditional pastimes. The game's simplicity is part of its charm, with no formal ruleset beyond the basic objective: Players toss rings to score the maximum number of points possible
The legend
The design was based on the legend behind the traditional game which says…"A legend tells that toads were worshiped for their magical powers. During holidays natives gathered to throw gold pieces into the lakes, with the hope that a toad would jump and eat it and turn into gold. Legend says that when this happened, the thrower was granted his/her wish."
In our quest to reimagine Juego de la Rana, we focused on the essential elements needed to play the game, identifying the frog and metal rings as its core components. The distinctive 'clink' when a ring strikes the frog is vital to the experience, generating excitement as players anticipate a high score. By utilizing noble materials, we aimed to simplify the visual and functional aspects while elevating the game's rich history. Each component serves a specific purpose, creating a democratic gaming experience accessible to all ages. Ultimately, we envisioned a sculptural piece that functions as both an elegant art object and a fully functional game—an attractive conversation starter for the home, ready for enjoyment during social gatherings.
We explored in several mockups and prototypes to come up with the most efficient design in terms of assembly, interaction and fabrication. We put a lot of emphasis on how each part should be easy to interpretate and how the interaction should be efficient.
Rana was showcased on the COLOMBIA Design booth, during Wanted Design NYC 2015 and MEDELLIN DESIGN WEEK 2015.
The fabrication
Due to complexity on the shape of the main body we had to design the best process to manufacture it and design the necessary jigs to achieve what we wanted. The material for the main body is Cork, the legs are made out of casted Onyx resin, the frog was CNC out of an aluminum billet and then chrome plated.
The initial mockups for the legs were formed in a Lathe out of foam, once the final shape was decided we made nylon legs for the silicone molds and to be able to scale the manufacturing in a most efficient way. No Post treatment were made to the legs, the matt finish was intended.
The scoring system resulted from the constant search of simplification. We wanted simple points, same as those used on dice. Commonly the score in the traditional game start from 10 and ends in the thousands. The goal is that even a child can play and enjoy “Rana”.
