CMON turned a rating site into a publisher.

CMON is a lesson in a community becoming a company. It began in 2001 as CoolMiniOrNot — a website where hobbyists posted photos of their painted miniatures for others to rate (a “Hot or Not” for minis). From that community it moved into producing miniatures and then into board-game publishing, rebranding to CMON. It is headquartered in Singapore and publicly listed (on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, code 1792, since 2016), with a US operation.

Its model became a defining force in modern tabletop: miniatures-heavy, thematic games funded on Kickstarter, packed with lavish plastic figures. The breakthrough was ⭐⭐ Zombicide (2012), a cooperative zombie-survival game that grew into a sprawling franchise, and CMON went on to some of the biggest board-game Kickstarters ever — Blood Rage, Rising Sun, Cthulhu: Death May Die, Marvel United, and the A Song of Ice and Fire miniatures game. Star designer Eric M. Lang (Blood Rage, Rising Sun) became CMON’s Director of Game Design.

⚠️ An honest, current caveat: CMON has faced serious financial difficulty in the mid-2020s (large losses, going-concern warnings, and the sale of its Singapore headquarters), and it has sold major IP — including Zombicide and Cthulhu: Death May Die — to Asmodee (2025–26). So the flagships that made CMON’s name are, in part, historic to the company rather than certain current holdings. We present CMON as the studio that built the miniatures-Kickstarter model, while being clear about the recent turn. (Honest notes: CMON is the publisher, not the designer of all its games — Zombicide was made with Guillotine Games, and Eric Lang designed some but not all; the exchange is HKEX not SGX; and no official brand hex is published.)

CMON lives in a crimson-and-steel palette. Click a swatch to copy the hex.

CMON’s identity is bold, epic and dramatic — a deep crimson, void black, and a steel grey. The palette reads as its games: the blood-crimson of Zombicide and Blood Rage, the black of dramatic worlds, the steel of sculpted miniatures. It’s a maximalist, cinematic world that signals theme, scale and spectacle. It’s a crimson-and-steel palette that signals miniatures-driven epic gaming. The honest caveat: CMON publishes no official brand hex, so the crimson, black and steel here are an original, unofficial interpretation, not first-party values.

The lesson is a crimson-and-steel palette signals epic spectacle. CMON’s world reads as dramatic and maximalist. For designers, it’s a reminder that deep crimson and steel evoke blood, drama and cast metal — right for spectacle-driven miniatures games. The takeaways: use deep crimson with a metallic for epic spectacle; ground it with black; and treat any single hex as unofficial when there’s no published spec.

The wordmark spirit is a bold epic sans — dramatic and heavy.

CMON’s identity carries a bold, epic, dramatic spirit — a “CMON” wordmark whose heavy forms match spectacle-driven, miniature-packed games. A bold epic sans captures the mood: it’s heavy and cinematic, matching a publisher built on lavish plastic and big Kickstarter reveals. Set against a crimson palette, the bold sans feels dramatic and grand — exactly the Zombicide, Blood-Rage personality CMON carries. It’s heavy rather than delicate, mirroring a table full of miniatures. (CMON’s real wordmark is a trademark we describe but don’t reproduce.) Because the exact mark isn’t ours to use, the honest description is “a bold epic sans spirit,” not the CMON logo. The type behaves like the brand: bold, epic and dramatic.

CMON built — and tested — a business model.

CMON is a lesson in a business model as much as a brand — including its risks. CMON pioneered and perfected the miniatures-Kickstarter playbook: enormous, thematic games sold on the promise of ever more lavish plastic figures, funded up front by huge crowdfunding campaigns. At its peak, this made CMON one of the most powerful forces in tabletop and put spectacular miniatures on countless tables. But the same model — heavy, expensive production, big up-front commitments, stretch-goal escalation — proved financially fragile: in the mid-2020s CMON hit serious trouble, sold its headquarters, and began selling flagship IP to Asmodee. That arc is the real lesson: CMON both proved the maximalist-crowdfunding model and became a cautionary tale about its costs. A brand can define a category and still be humbled by the economics of it.

For designers and brand-builders, CMON offers a clear takeaway: a model that wins attention isn’t automatically a model that sustains a business. The lessons: understand that spectacle and scale carry real cost and risk, not just upside; be honest that even a category-defining brand can falter on economics; and keep the facts precise — CMON began as CoolMiniOrNot, built the miniatures-Kickstarter model behind Zombicide, and has recently faced distress and sold IP to Asmodee. It’s also a reminder to keep it honest: CMON publishes rather than designs all its games (Zombicide with Guillotine Games; Eric Lang designed some); it’s HKEX-listed, not SGX; its flagships’ ownership is shifting; and no official brand hex is published, so the palette here is an interpretation. CMON built and tested a model — proof that a defining approach, and its limits, can both be the difference.

Keep CMON’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.