SMLXL and Principi use motion blur to illustrate a fruit fight

Every card in Fruit Fight looks like it’s been caught mid-throw. The illustrations – soft, saturated blurs of bananas, pears and watermelons – register as fruit in motion, captured at the exact moment of impact. It’s a purely digital effect, achieved entirely through motion blur applied to vector artwork, but the results feel surprisingly physical, as though someone actually hurled a piece of fruit and you’re seeing the streak it left behind. The card game is part of Magenta, a collection-based card game line from CMYK, the studio behind Wavelength and Monikers. Where CMYK’s earlier catalogue consisted of standalone titles each with its own identity, Magenta operates as a unified system designed to establish card game nights as a recurring ritual. New York and Barcelona-based design company SMLXL developed both the Magenta identity and Fruit Fight’s illustrative direction in collaboration with Barcelona studio Principi. The two studios have a shared history – when the project began in spring 2023, they were still operating as one practice under the name Pràctica, splitting into separate entities by January 2024. Fruit Fight’s premise is straightforward: players compete to steal opponents’ most valuable fruits or risk losing their own. The game’s title gave the team their conceptual starting point, but translating it into illustration demanded a specific kind of restraint. The artwork needed to feel fun and connected to the theme. “The style had to be at the right volume where engaging, while at the same time effortless and supportive of its game mechanics,” Co-founder and Partner Javier Arizu explains. Finding that balance meant the illustrations couldn’t be too detailed or too literal – they had to sit in a space where players registered them quickly and moved on to the strategic decisions that drive the game.