THIS IS THE REMIX: 2016 Bowman

I thought I'd take the occasion of 2016 Bowman hitting the shelves to post a remix I did a few months ago. My overall impression of Topps' design is mostly positive. I like the angular elements and appreciate that everything is (mostly) readable The biggest issue I have is just the overall busy-ness, with all the shines and fades and bevels. The lack of a solid border was the first thing I changed while keeping a few of the overlaps along the top. Next, I changed the name so both the first and last are aligned on the left and just made the tab a solid transparent tab. The Bowman and RC logos are in the same spot. I decided to make the shape holding the player position into an actual home plate instead of just the "sorta" home plate they used. The little tab thing between that and the logo has the team name repeating over and over like a ticker, like the original design. (The Schwarber here says "ROOKIE" over and over.) Then I added the drop shadow to the player cutout and faded the background image a bit to help the player stand out.

You can see here how the solid border looks with the parallels in comparison to the Topps' design. It's definitely easier to spot on your initial view. The fade on the borderless right side of the card in the original really bugs me. The solid border fixes that. I did a few more below though I don't know if these are included in 2016.

The changes aren't too drastic but they definitely fit my own personal style more than all the over-texturing that Topps is so smitten with currently. In my mind, they're about 5-7 years behind design trends with all of the beveling and whatnot. The remix would definitely age a lot better down the line than the original design.

2016 Spirit Deluxe

The flagship, "low-end" and retro base designs have been in the books for a while now, so it's time to finish up the Spirit quartet with Deluxe, the "high-end" set.

I tried to keep the elements to a minimum and keep the cards from getting too busy. The player names are along the bottom left, stamped in silver foil. Additionally, there's a silver line below and the Deluxe "D" in the upper right corner, all three elements stamped with a bit of an embossed effect. The look is mimicked by the team cap logo in the bottom right corner, though the embossing there is strictly a design effect and not physically embossed. You can see why in the autograph parallels below.

With the white feather coming up from below to help ensure the autographs are visible, the fake embossed look for the logo is a necessity so the players don't have any issues when actually signing.

The backs probably look pretty similar to previous years of Deluxe cards with a good sized photo up top with the rest of space devoted for stats/write-up/other info. Here we have full-size team logos as well as a single stat line encompassing the players's whole career. Also, I actually took the time to do the "write-up" instead of using lorem ipsum text like I usually do, so enjoy more of my meandering writing if you'd like.

The next design post will probably be the Clubhouse All-Stars insert I've done every year but I may do a "review" post with an exciting new format! (Mostly because I've been reeeeeally bad at keeping up with reviewing the 2016 releases from Topps and Panini thus far.)