Redmond A. Simonsen

Redmond Aksel Simonsen (June 18, 1942 – March 9, 2005) was an American graphic artist and game designer best known for his work at the board wargame company Simulations Publications, Inc. (SPI) in the 1970s and early 1980s. Simonsen was considered an innovator in game information graphics, and is credited with creating the term "game designer".

As art director at SPI Simonsen supervised the release of over 400 game titles, and had game design or development credit for over twenty games. In addition, he variously held positions of executive art editor and co-editor or executive editor for the SPI magazines Strategy & Tactics, MOVES and Ares. Simonsen was the Charles Roberts Awards Hall of Fame inductee for 1977. He was honored as a "famous game designer" by being featured as the king of clubs in Flying Buffalo's 2008 Famous Game Designers Playing Card Deck.

Simonsen was born and raised in Inwood, Manhattan, the second son of Astri Nordlie Simonsen and August Emil Simonsen, an immigrant from Norway. His father was a high ironworker who died in a fall from a building; his mother then worked as a domestic and raised her three children August, Lois, and Redmond. Simonsen attended the Stuyvesant High School from 1956-1960. He served two tours in the United States Air Force, and was accepted for enrollment at Cooper Union, where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1964. Subsequent work as a graphic artist included designing the book jacket for Is Paris Burning? (1965), album covers for London Records, and KOOL cigarette advertisements. He also worked as a photographer, and sold pictures to TIME, Newsweek and The New York Times.

Main articles: Strategy & Tactics and Simulation Publications, Inc.

Redmond Simonsen was the graphic designer on the wargaming hobby fanzine Strategy & Tactics. In 1969, the 'zine was sold by its founder/publisher Chris Wagner to James F. Dunnigan for $1. Although circulation was only around 1,000 copies, Dunnigan planned on using the magazine to promote new games he was designing. Later he wrote in The Complete Wargames Handbook:

Doing the magazine also brought graphic design ace Redmond Simonsen into SPI. I knew that the magazine, and the games, needed a professional look. Simonsen was a native New Yorker, and a wargamer in addition to being a highly talented artist. So I made him an offer he couldn't refuse: half the business (we later shared some of this with some of the original staff).

The format of Strategy & Tactics (S&T) was ambitiously changed to a bi-monthly magazine with a complete game inside every issue, along with an accompanying historical article.^{[citation needed]} Dunigan created Simulations Publications, Inc. (SPI) in 1969, with Simonsen as his co-founder. Dunnigan and Simonsen's newly incorporated SPI began publish non-magazine games as well. At that time the main wargame publisher, Avalon Hill, released only one or two new games a year. The response was overwhelming. Simonsen wrote: "Via a program of advertising, S&Ts circulation began to build and sales of SPI games to its readers began to take on serious proportions." Combined with other factors such as a sophisticated computerized customer feedback system the company experienced exponential growth. By the mid-'70s SPI's revenues exceeded $2 million annually, with up to forty employees. Circulation of Strategy and Tactics steadily grew, eventually peaking at over 36,000 by 1980.

Simonsen acted as founding editor for SPI's Ares Magazine, a fantasy/science fiction game magazine following the same approach as Strategy & Tactics, until replaced during the TSR takeover.