Board games don’t usually get the opportunity to be redesigned, because it’s expensive and most people won’t buy a board game twice. So the incentive has to be there to do so, and luckily Pret-A-Porter got that chance. Pictured below is the old design of the game.

The original Pret-A-Porter was an abysmally ugly game. For a game about designing clothes and going to fashion shows, the aesthetic of beige and flat uninspired font choices did not make the game very popular. At its core, the mechanics and gameplay were solid, but the lack of color and style hindered the game from being a truly immersive experience. So when the publisher decided to re-release it, they hired artist Kwanchai Moriya to update all of the elements of the game. The game is now infinitely more legible, opting for more clearly defined spaces with a clearer focus put on the phases of the fashion design process. Gone is the beige, replaced with more appropriate font choices reminiscent of the Paris fashion week scene, and updated clothing icons to boot. It is rare that you can see a game go from being bad to good purely on aesthetic and graphic design tweaks. Functionally the games play identically, but the third edition feels more authentic and flows better because of the redesign. Legibility is increased as action goes top to bottom, left to right as opposed to the jumbled mess of a board from the old design. This design also moves to the manual, which is larger, easier to read, and includes many more graphics and examples to help teach the game to others. It was so good when I played it at a board game cafe I bought it myself, and I think it’s a testament to what good design can do for a product.