Okay, you now have your Project Image and Splash image on point. You've captured the viewer's attention as they scroll through your campaign. They marvel at it's organization and ability to hold their interest...the game is nice too. Good work! But now it's time to give your campaign that extra appeal that will show a potential backer that you're not just another ordinary Kickstarter and that you're paying attention to the small details.
the “Nice-Touch” headers
Take a look at your graphics-checklist and you'll find there are some things that you want to put some extra effort into - heck, everything would be a shiny rendered gif if you had your way - but certain items are not worthy of thy artists’ talents (or time). Instead, as mentioned in our discussion of the Splash Image, you should find an opportunity for your artist to get more out of less.
Wait. What’s that you said? Section headers? Yes! Genius!
Sections Headers are critical in organizing your campaign and making the information digestible for potential backers. Your campaign will likely have numerous sections, and headers are a great opportunity to use the same image multiple times. It should be relatively easy to make your header fit the theme of the game. Think of re-using characters or items that backers would find on components within the game. Make sure to maintain hierarchy however, as headers are about the TITLE OF THE SECTION, not about the artwork. Legibility and consistency are key.
Little touches like this, to graphic-elements worth touching, can go a long way in assuring a potential backer that you’re going to pay attention to the details when it comes to your game. Something you could have overlooked and simply used a default text for, you’ve now taken to a higher level, setting yourself apart from the hundreds of other campaigns they could be browsing. Below, I've grabbed a wide range of Section Headers from various boardgame campaigns. Generally ranging from low to high effort, we hope these can give you and your artist some inspiration. *Note, I didn't bother with back-links this time.
Use these (or don't if you hate every single one of them) as a mark to shoot for. Each level will take considerable more effort and, as with all the imagery in the campaign, it should be a point of discussion with your team on how much benefit there is in spending the extra time. If you really want to impress people, you can make your headers a subtle gif. When considering this, make sure the movement isn't too loud or distracting but more of a “Oh wow, did that thing just move?! Cool! I want to give this campaign my money" type of reaction. While gifs may seem a bit over the top, subtle-gifs probably aren't as complicated as you think and can really take your campaign to the next level.
I figure this is a good point to now speak on effort as a whole when it comes to "Kickstarters." For many creators (minus the big name companies that Kickstart products as a business model rather than, literally, the only option they have), Kickstarters allows you to bring your passion to life without having to risk your house on its success. What you don't have in money, you can and should make up for in effort. Time, at this point, is really all you have. Sure, you may spend a ton of time designing your campaign and it may flop but at least it wont hit you where it hurts - your wallet. Moreover, in my time becoming a part of the tabletop creator community I have quickly learned that there are a lot of brilliant gaming-minds who have an awesome game, have put a considerable amount of effort into creating that masterpiece, but severely fall short in their campaign. As I've mentioned before, it can be tough coming to grips with the necessity of the business-side of bringing your idea to life but, in the end, the effort your'e willing to put in to everything besides the game design itself will likely determine it's success. So when it come's to deciding which items get that graphic flare - I'd encourage you to recognize the value in putting in that extra time. It will pay off in the end.
*end amazing speech*
Here is an example of what we did - it's middle of the road I'd say. With our campaign, we thought it would be cool, from the outset, to create gifs for a few items throughout the Kickstarter page. In taking some time to correctly set up a Photoshop template file frame by frame, making each subsequent new Header was simply a matter of changing the text on the first frame (Photoshop is smart like that!). The headers came out great and we really thought it added that "wait, did that thing just move?! Sweet!" factor to our campaign.
The infamous Stretch-Goal section to be discussed in Part IV. Stay tuned.