Wednesday, May 21, 2014

2014 Clubhouse

Here's a look at the 2014 design for Spirit's low-end product, Clubhouse. Having lived with the 2013 design for a year now, I decided to shift the tone back a little more toward "fun" this year. There are definitely some similarities between 2014 and the initial 2012 design. Obviously there's the horizontal format but also the bold names and the bold colors. This is bringing the set back to what I originally had in mind.


With the horizontal format we'll see more dynamic action shots, different from those on the vertical Spirit base design. There's a full-color action cut-out on top of a team-color shaded background. Just above the secondary color bar with the player position/team name is a big, bold last name. Tucked just above that is the player's first name in a nice script font. In the bottom right corner is a white triangle leaving just enough room for the team cap logo.


On the back are a couple of color boxes for all the pertinent player bio information. Next to a small portrait is a stat block with the player's five most-recent seasons along with their career totals, leaving room for a few sentences about them. As you can see from the numbering in the upper right, the set is a lot bigger than most non-flagship releases. A 600-card, no-foil low-end set would definitely fill a hole in the current baseball card landscape.


I'm adding a single parallel to the set, Clubhouse Gold seen here. Just like the original Topps Gold parallels, these are strictly the same cards but with gold foil embellishing a few areas. I also made the background color gold, too, to help set them off in case the foil gets overlooked.