When creating an organizer, whether realized or not, every designer has a set of priorities. These range from points they absolutely will not sacrifice to some things they are willing to budge a little to accommodate other design challenges.

Here's a list of the things I want to be true of every organizer I design:

 

1. Be easy to build. 

Directions should be clear and easy to understand. The organizer should not be overly laborious to build. Parts should be easy to find, or somehow separated to be identifiable and distinguishable.

2. Be flexible in design.

Being flexible will allow the end user to adjust how their organizer is used based on how they play their game.

3. Be modular. 

Organizers should be able to grow, to a certain extent, as the games they are designed to store continue to expand. Future updates should be able to be implemented easily. The organizer should also be able to be recycled for use with other games. It shouldn't be a single-use product with an instant obsolescence if a game is updated or sold.

4. Minimal impact on miniatures.

For those who paint their miniatures, and as someone who paints their own, a good organizer should be designed to touch the paint job as little as possible to avoid scraping paint and ruining hours of effort painting.

5. Minimize shelf storage space without sacrificing component integrity.

Many of you have a lot of games. Many of you have limited storage space. Many of you have both. I hate seeing people having to be super picky over what games to buy because they don't know where they're going to put them. Lid lift is a huge issue with many people, but if I had to pick between a little bit of lift or using even more space to have an additional box, I choose a bit of lid lift. 

6. Design with gameplay and setup steps in mind.

Stuff you need first or use most frequently should be at the top of the box.

7. Design with sleeved cards in mind.

I like sleeved cards. They look nice, shuffle easily, and they are mostly protected. However,, simply sleeving cards can easily double the stack height of these cards. That's simply not always easy to account for when designing. I try my best to make sure my designs can hold sleeved cards, sometimes, it's just ... not in the cards.

 

So with these points in mind, I view my organizers as tools that serve a purpose and do some things differently than other organizers. These priorities may or may not align with how anyone else wants an organizer to look or function, and that’s fine. People drive different cars for different reasons, wear different clothes, eat different foods, use different software, and all to fit different needs. Do I think I’ve made a system for organizers that solves the biggest issues I’m concerned with? Absolutely, yes. I think it’s pretty awesome, and I hope you enjoy these organizers as much as I do!