Puzzles

Between late 2015 and early 2016, I worked at Zen Art & Design, a startup that manufactures artisanal wooden jigsaw puzzles.  My job was to design the digital templates used to cut all the puzzles.

Small Zen Puzzles are 7.5" square, and have about 125 pieces.  Mandarin Duck was one of the newest additions to the main Zen line while I was there, and it was one of my first opportunities to create a puzzle almost completely from scratch.  Nearly all the figural pieces are my own designs, and I was able to determine where each would be placed in the puzzle as well.

The templates are vector files, created using Adobe Illustrator, though this was composited with the puzzle image using Photoshop.

Between late 2015 and early 2016, I worked at Zen Art & Design, a startup that manufactures artisanal wooden jigsaw puzzles.  My job was to design the digital templates used to cut all the puzzles.

Medium Zen Puzzles are 9.5" square and have about 200 pieces.  Lotus Blossoms is one of the earliest images in the Zen Puzzles line, and as such I only made new figural pieces for the medium and large sizes.  In this template, the ones I designed are the two mirrored fish - or more accurately, The Two Golden Fish of Buddhist symbology.  For the large size, I continued this theme, including figurals representing The Endless Knot and Wisdom Eyes.

The templates are vector files, created using Adobe Illustrator, though this was composited with the puzzle image using Photoshop.

, though they're harder to do than that sounds!  Lotus Blossoms is one of the earliest images in the Zen Puzzles line, and as such I only made new figural pieces for the medium and large sizes (coming soon!).  In this template, the ones I designed are the two mirrored fish - or more accurately, The Two Golden Fish of Buddhist symbology.  For the large size, I continued this theme, including figurals representing The Endless Knot and Wisdom Eyes.

The templates are vector files, created using Adobe Illustrator.  I also do some processing work of the final design in CorelDraw before it's sent off to the production team.  At that point it's cut using an industrial laser, disassembled, boxed, and ready for sale!

Between late 2015 and early 2016, I worked at Zen Art & Design, a startup that manufactures artisanal wooden jigsaw puzzles.  My job was to design the digital templates used to cut all the puzzles.

Large Zen Puzzles are 11.5" square and have about 300 pieces.  Blue Parrot predated my time at ZAD, but since I redesigned the entire line of existing puzzles, I still worked a lot on it.  I ended up designing about half of the figurals in use in the current large template, some of which are also used in the smaller sizes.

The templates are vector files, created using Adobe Illustrator, though this was composited with the puzzle image using Photoshop.

Between late 2015 and early 2016, I worked at Zen Art & Design, a startup that manufactures artisanal wooden jigsaw puzzles.  My job was to design the digital templates used to cut all the puzzles.

Peapod Puzzles are designed for children, and come in 2 types.  Both are 7.5" square.  The 25-piece variety features a single figural piece, and is intended for kids around 4-6 years old.  The 53-piece versions have 4 figurals, and are meant for children under around 12.  Enchanted Forest is one of the line's newest images, and I designed all but the butterfy in the corner.  The 25-piece version features a gnome figural I also made.

The templates are vector files, created using Adobe Illustrator, though this was composited with the puzzle image using Photoshop.