Christmas time was fast approaching and the idea popped into my head to create a custom Monopoly game for my family. I remember seeing something for a "Make Your Own Opoly" game, but when i checked it out, I found out it's whack. It only has 9 spaces per side instead of the official Monopoly's 10, you have to print it out on your home computer, and just lacks the overall look and feel of the original game.
So began my quest to find a Monopoly template for Photoshop , something that I could just open up on in Photoshop, swap out the default titles with my own, and if I wanted to, redesign any element of the board. I can't say I searched the 4 corners of the globe for a proper template, so the best I came up with was something that someone threw together quickly in a forum somewhere.
It was a good start, but the creator was rushing to do it quickly and overlooked a few things. So I took it into Photoshop, simplified a lot of the structure, and designed the board to mirror the original Monopoly design. I set the file at CMYK/300dpi and set the dimensions at 20in x 20in, the actual Monopoly board dimensions. However, Christmas time was fast approaching, so I didn't have a whole lot of time to labor over every detail.
That being said, there are a few shortcomings with my template, but all of them can be fixed quickly. Here's a quick list of them.
- No Mr. Moneybags. He wasn't relevant to my project so he was left out.
- Didn't have time to illustrate Luxury Tax, Guy in Jail, amongst other things.
- A lot of the dimensions are eyed-up and not necessarily exact measurements
- All the icons (electric company, trains, go, free parking, etc...) were drawn quite poorly in Photoshop. If I had more time, I would have properly illustrated them in a fancy program called Illustrator.
- The typefaces aren't exactly proper, especially on the property cards. The main typeface is Kabel, which you have to pay for, so I used knockoff fonts that are similar, but not the original.
- The colors aren't exactly correct, so you'd have to twiddle with them
- I haven't included the fonts in the ZIP file, as it's not my place to distribute other peoples' fonts. So you'll need to find and download the fonts KabaleMedium and KabobLight in order to get the Monopoly-type fonts.
All these shortcomings aside, the Monopoly template is pretty strong. Enjoy!
