Designer Diary - Bumfuzzled #18 - Skyward Spectrum

Welcome back to another designer diary! It's always fun for me to revisit the design process all these months later, as most puzzles are designed nine months to a year in advance. I hope you enjoy following along as well!


The Initial Spark

I've always enjoyed rainbows, and bright colors in general. One, they're super pretty, and their rarity makes them a real treat when you catch one.

Two, as I came to appreciate later in life, they're a reminder of one of the many covenants God has made with humankind (the greatest of which eventually came through Jesus' life, death, and resurrection!). While I certainly don't worship nature, as I worship the Creator rather than creation, I love and admire how He reveals Himself through His creation, as Romans 1:20 says:

"For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead."

Rainbows are just one of those beautiful reminders. So, I knew I wanted to make a rainbow puzzle, but what direction to take?


Introducing the Airplanes

I work in the board game world, and some of the more striking box covers I've seen are colorful imagery on a stark, white background.

As I was thinking about this, an image of airplanes leaving colorful trails through the sky popped into my head. Of course, being a rainbow, this meant seven airplanes, one for each of the standard rainbow color spectrum of ROYGBIV. After doing some research on different airplane shapes, this was the initial layout:



The angle of the airplanes cutting through the sky makes for a dramatic look, and I always enjoy interrupting the edges of the canvas, which came out nicely here!

The main trick was just placing the airplanes in an aesthetically pleasing manner, which took a lot of playing and nudging around in Photoshop before I was happy with the placement.


Those Swirls

I've probably mentioned a few times how I really detest drawing lots of spirally swirls. They're annoyingly difficult to draw well, and due to the amount of erasing I do to get them to look right, they're incredibly time-consuming!

However, I have to admit they look stinkin' cool, and they're a really fun puzzle element. They also just "fit" as a floaty, ethereal airplane trail, so I made them the main feature. So, every once in a while, I force myself to draw a bunch of swirls!

I've learned over the course of a few puzzles with swirls that it's ideal to design them first. They don't play nice with adjacent shapes, as you can't bend, squish, or modify a swirl. So, it's super nice to start with them, amd design the rest of the puzzle from there.


The Other Trails

I knew I wanted the trails to have varying "personalities", so I created a few different styles of them.

The fighter jets took on a harsh, almost comic-like action trail. I imagine if they were in a comic book, the trail would be accompanied by a solid "SHHHHRRRAAAAK!".

The airbus-style passenger plane has a purposeful but flowy trail of finger-like shapes.

Other planes leave a nice, pleasant, pillowy trail. You might remember this cut pattern from some past puzzles where I've used this pattern for trees or clouds.

The smallest trail needed to be kept simple, so I gave it a very geometric, almost Frank-Lloyd Wright-esque trail.

Comical side note: I did not anticipate how these trails would result in a lively contrails vs. chemtrails debate in the comment section of one of my Meta ads. I'll stay out of that one! I purely made this design out of the aesthetic enjoyment of the subject matter!


The Empty Sky

Going back to my admiration of board game box covers, I knew I wanted anything that wasn't an airplane of a plane trail to be rather nondescript, and just plain uncolored area.



While I normally don't go with a standard jigsaw pattern since laser cutting makes it possible to do so many more interesting things, I didn't want the sky to compete for attention, and liked the contrast of it here vs. the very detailed trails. Also, almost all of the "standard" pieces have a bit of the piece that connects to something more interesting.

I also made a few tweaks at this stage to some of the airplanes to make them a bit more connective.


The Final Result!

This one really had no coloring decisions to make, other than the airplane colors, which I decided to make white. So, off to sampling it went, and back came this beauty!



If you check the Kickstarter campaign pledges, this is currently leading the pack for the Spring 2025 series. so I must have done something right with this one!

My design approach is simply to make things I like, not worrying too much about what I think other people will want. It allows me to take more joy in the design process, and it's also just super fun to see where your tastes match up with mine, or where they diverge!

For example, one of my all-time favorites is Bumfuzzled #5: Dashing Locks, but it was one of the worst sellers of all-time. I'm still glad to have made it since I like it so much!

On the slip side, this was one of my favorites as well, and it's on track to be one of the best sellers! You just never know until you put your work out there!