Another creative titan dead – Redmond Simonsen is dead at 62. He was the creative force in graphics for SPI, and I’m sorry to say if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you probably never will. Still, his passing made the New York Times:
“As S.P.I.’s vice president and art director, Mr. Simonsen standardized the look of the games, fitting historically accurate, visually comprehensible information into small spaces. The company’s earliest game boards were black and white, with playing pieces (there might be several hundred) that had to be glued onto shirt cardboard and cut out by hand. The games were soon produced in full color, with die-cut pieces ready to punch out.
Redmond Aksel Simonsen was born in Manhattan on June 18, 1942, to Norwegian-American parents. He earned a bachelor of fine arts degree from the Cooper Union in 1964 and afterward worked as a graphic designer of book jackets, album covers and advertisements.
S.P.I. began in the summer of 1969, when Mr. Simonsen and Mr. Dunnigan took over Strategy and Tactics, a gaming magazine. Mr. Simonsen redesigned the magazine, including in each issue a complete game, plus a historical article about the battle it simulated. The company released more than 400 games in a little more than a decade, and by the mid-1970’s, Mr. Dunnigan said, it manufactured more than half of all the war games sold worldwide. It also produced science fiction and fantasy games, several of which Mr. Simonsen designed.”
All of us who love to play games owe Mr. Simonsen a huge debt.
