The Imitation Game with Google

Last year Google reached out to us with a little project that needed a crazy turnaround. Luckily, it was a fun one!

It was a microsite where they would post a puzzle (!) connected to "The Imitation Game." The movie, featuring Benedict Cumberbatch, tells the amazing life story of Alan Turing, who was not just a genius but a pioneer of computer sciences (hence Google's interest). It is also about puzzles and cracking secret codes.

We would design the microsite, but also the puzzle itself, so folks could print it at home and try to decipher it and get prizes. Web + game design. Yes!

The site is super straightforward. (But I would give it a star sticker for being the first one ever from me that Google approved with a dark background!)

The puzzle/game itself (written by a Google Engineer) was super fun to design. Here is why...
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SPOILER ALERT: STOP READING IF YOU WILL TRY THE GAME YOURSELF!
If you want to take a shot at cracking the code yourself, stop reading and download it here:
https://imitationgame.withgoogle.com/
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Made to look like a plain letter typed on an old school typewriter, it had a specific arrangement of words on the page, that gave away subtle clues. To crack the code you had to not only know the answers to the letter's questions (or, you know, Google them)... but also you had to figure out that specific typographic elements were a clue... and that the word right above those elements—on the line above it—was another clue! A typographic puzzle!

The promotion (to get movie tickets and posters) is over. But the site is still live and you can still download the puzzle there. (Go check the "plain" design of the downloadable letter too).

Cheers