One of my favorite products I’ve designed is a modular card storage solution that organizes player’s cards in the box and on the table. It was inspired by the casino-style card shoe and the ease of use it provides- I call it a ShoeBox.
The goal from the start was to come up with a reusable product design that solves common problems across many different games. In this case, it was card management and storage. This turned out to be a more nuanced problem than I had expected.
The problems were plenty. Cards come in a variety of different dimensions. Each game uses a different amount of them. The game boxes themselves have their own tolerances. Players often sleeve their cards with protective plastic sheathes, of varying thicknesses. On top of all of those variables, the final design has to be tough enough to survive shipping and heavy handed users.
I bought every major sleeve brand on the market and tested compatibility across all of them. I prototyped multiple iterations, testing wall thickness, side angles, and bevel radii until I landed on a geometry strong enough to twist firmly and return to shape. Then I built the whole thing parametrically in Blender — using blendshapes, drivers, and custom parameters so that typing in a new card dimension rescales both the box and lid together, ready to print.
One foundational model. Dozens of games. Bespoke sets for Gwent, Star Trek Captain’s Chair, Let’s Go to Japan, and more — each one sized perfectly, each one produced without starting from scratch.
That’s the ShoeBox. It’s more than an individual product, it’s a system.