Keepin' It Clean

One of my personal favorite designs from Spirit in 2012 was the Clubhouse Moonshots insert. Homerun hitters, die-cut, big ol' moon. What's not to love? This time around, I kept the subject the same but changed the name to Clean-Up Crew. The die-cut is also back again though in a much different shape.

The arrows are a play on the 'up' part of 'clean-up' and helped me get the design rolling. The one on the right leaves a nice tidy space for the team logo or a memorabilia swatch. I wanted to make sure all arrows pointed up so the upper left corner was the natural choice for the other die-cut location. Having some part of the player cut into the arrow keeps things from getting stale.

As the arrows take care of the latter half of the insert name, the bright neon green/yellow color on the bottom handles the 'clean' half. Something about the color makes me think of a super-intense household cleaner that would almost scrub the skin off your finger. I imagine the ink would be almost plastic-like on the finished product.

On the back side, we have the reverse die-cut shape to deal with but luckily plenty of space is left for another big player portrait. The neon is turned down a bit with black being the most prominent color. Below a brief write-up is the 2012 stat line with categories relevant to clean-up hitters (HR, RBI, total bases, slugging % and OPS.)

All in all, the bright colors, special shape and big batters seem to fit right in with the Clubhouse line.

2013 Spirit Artistry

One of the earlier inserts from last year was Artistry, which focused on some of the top pitchers in the majors. I decided to revisit it this year with a different technique. Where the previous design was basically a filter-y and layered photo composite, I spent quite a bit more time this go 'round.


I did begin with a photo once again, only this time it was mostly for reference and not manipulation. I spent hours in Photoshop, layering different brushes to build up colors into objects. Basically, it was just like I was creating an oil painting, only with a mouse instead of actual brushes and paint. Different grungy and abstract brushes helped keep things looking organic and a bit impressionistic. You can tell it more on the Bumgarner below than the Rivera above.

Once I had the painting where I liked it, I took the original photo and laid it over the painting. Using some of those artistic brushes, I masked out parts of the photo to let the underpainting show through. Overall, it gives it that half photo/half paint look. I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. That's why the gold foil text is so minimal and unimposing.

On the back, I kind of replicated last year's picture frame idea but went with a more ornate frame that you'd likely see on some 19th century Impressionist paintings.

This is by far the most labor-intensive concept I've done to this point. It was pretty fun to click back and  forth between the photo and painting and bask in my progress. I do wish I had gone with a non-pinstriped player in Rivera's place. THAT was a pain, let me tell ya.

2013 Spirit Rookie Round-Up

It's been a while since I posted anything for the Spirit flagship series. Time for a new insert. This one features 20 rookies that have gotten off to a good start in 2013. I figured it would be nice to have some MLB inserts of these guys instead of so many minor league cards.

The design is a bit 'in your face,' a little reminiscent of some of the early 90s inserts with player cutouts on top of a busy background. I enjoy grunging things up so I went with that for the look. Big, bold letters roughed up and running across the background set on top of vintage team colors. The idea is that if you had all 20 cards lined up left-to-right, the 'ROOKIE' and 'ROUND-UP' text would stretch across multiple times. As it is now, each card has a slightly different cut of those letters. At the bottom, we find the player name along with position and the weathered team logo in the corner.

The back has a solid team-color background instead of the two-tone from the front. On the left is another player photo with some soft, grungy edges. To the right is the N/P/T along with a little tidbit of his MLB debut. Some may be more impressive than others (note Noonan's 0 for 1, pinch hit debut.) In the middle is a block for a brief write-up (greeked text here since I was too lazy to "write.")

This is one of the few cards I've done without any shiny foil or die-cut or other bells and whistles. The finish would be matte to fit the design rather than glossy. The edginess fits with the subject of rookies so I thought I'd let it stand on its own.

2013 Spirit Deluxe Duos

With Deluxe being Spirit's "high-end" product, I figured the dual-autograph Deluxe Duos would be a good place to start with 2013's inserts. These wouldn't be as prevalent as the auto and relic parallels from the base set, maybe about a 1:20 hit.

Like last year's version, the design is right in step with the base cards. We have the pointed tabs shooting in from the edges, filled with a team-color twill texture. All of the text (minus the certification small-print) is in shiny silver foil to jump off the glossy finish. It's bisected horizontally with each half of the duo on the top or bottom. A small cutout of the players sits in the left corners on top of another team-color twill texture that fades to white moving to the right, leaving room for the player signatures.

On the back, the tabs are inverted and filled with some bigger action shots. The team-color twill makes an appearance again as a background for the small print and authentication copy. The team logo also finds its way into the mix.

While not every club may have a duo on the level of Kemp/Kershaw here, most would have at least one player of note get excited about. Especially at the SRP of $10-$15 a pack.

2013 Pennant Incumbents

Free agency has become such a big part of the MLB landscape, I thought it would fun to make an insert that shows the impact it's had on all current rosters. The Incumbents features the 30 players that have been on each team the longest. While you have guys like Jeter here who have been around the same place since the previous century, most clubs have a higher turnover rate than that.

The design echoes the 2013 Pennant base design with the beveled top corners, simple team colors and the half-circle tab to house the Pennant logo. The borders here are a little more cream than white, though. Each player is cut out from an personal-type portrait and placed over a solid background. The Incumbents text stretches across the width of the card and separates the color boxes along with the player name & info. With Pennant being a retro set, the photo color levels are altered and some grain is added to the whole front along with the typography meant to evoke some past era.

The backs are kept to one-color and have a black beveled border. The top is packed with the insert title, action photo, player name, card number and team logo as well as a bit of text that reads how long the player has been a part of his big league clube. I left plenty of space for a sizable write-up highlighting the team's successes/failures in the time the player has been around.

Here's a checklist of the players featured.

ARI - Miguel Montero

ATL - Tim Hudson

BAL - Nick Markakis

BOS - David Ortiz

CHC - Alfonso Soriano

CHW - Paul Konerko

CIN - Brandon Phillips

CLE - Asdrubal Cabrera

COL - Todd Helton

DET - Justin Verlander

HOU - Wesley Wright

KCR - Alex Gordon

LAA - Jered Weaver

LAD - Andre Ethier

MIA - Ricky Nolasco

MIL - Ryan Braun

MIN - Justin Morneau

NYM - David Wright

NYY - Derek Jeter

OAK - Daric Barton

PHI - Jimmy Rollins

PIT - Andrew McCutchen

SDP - Chase Headley

SFG - Matt Cain

SEA - Felix Hernandez

STL - Yadier Molina

TBR - Ben Zobrist

TEX - Ian Kinsler

TOR - Adam Lind

WAS - Ryan Zimmerman

It's interesting but I suppose not all that surprising that most of the guys here are kind of no-brainers. They have obviously been good performers or else they wouldn't have stuck around so long. But you also have a few rebuilding teams (Houston and Miami) and others that construct their rosters differently (Oakland, Arizona) where the representative isn't necessarily the marquee guy on the squad. Personally, I think it's nice mixing up the checklists from set to set just to keep things from getting stale. That said, I can't imagine being too excited if I pulled a Wesley Wright insert card, though I have had to suffer with plenty of Ricky Nolasco cards.

REVIEW: 2013 Bowman

The biggest takeaway from the 2012 Bowman design was how it was a big departure from what Bowman had been putting out for many years past. As we review the 2013 version, it looks like that big year-to-year jump was merely aberration and not a new gameplan heading forward. Just like the 2012 version, this year we have white borders, not-quite rectangular frames in team colors, silver foil names, subtle drop shadows around the players, team logos centered above the name block. Honestly, you could be looking at last year's cards while reading that description and it would be 100% accurate. About the only distinguishing features here are the little tabs folding in on the left and right sides and the soft white overlay to finish out that curve. If we didn't have 2012 to compare this to, I'd really like the base design here. But as a follow up, it looks more like a rehash and suffers a bit.

For the backside, the similarities are even more....similar. The layout is identical to 2012 with a little tinkering to fit this year's look. The colored tabs on the bottom and the black nameplate are pretty much where those embellishments are made. I mentioned a couple things on last year's review that I thought were easy improvements to make. I suggested that the last section of the Bowman Briefing be changed from EVOLUTION to UP CLOSE (like it is/was on the prospect cards.) I doubt that any eyeballs at Topps saw my recommendation but somehow it was magically changed for this year. My other suggestion, however, seems to have gone without notice. The card numbers are still in the upper right corner, which means if you store these upright in a cardboard box, the numbers won't be visible. So once I again, I propose this amendment to the Baseball Card Constitution: horizontal backs have to be numbered in the upper left corner to help for storage box sorting.

Now on to what is basically Bowman's reason to exist: prospect cards. For 2012, I preferred the veteran design to the prospect design but I'm flipping it around for this year. The prospect design is a lot easier to distinguish here thanks to the solid team-color wedges above the name. There are some subtle shape differences to the frame and nameplates that also help them stick out. The team logos are removed to help save space for the autographs (I assume.) That means the team names are found below the player name and the position is moved to the right color wedge. 

Like every other Topps release, there are plenty of parallels again. Gold, blue, purple, orange, silver ice, etc., etc. The international cards are a little different this year. The flags have some texture to them so they aren't as glaringly obvious as prior years. Also, for American-born players, they have the flag of their home state up here instead of the Stars & Stripes. I'm all for anything that helps distinguish them from previous years. 

The Top 100 Prospects cards are actually pretty nice. They have a smooth, cool finish to them with some silver, black and blue/red colors around the border. There appears to be a die-cut version as well but, as I've mentioned before, I'm not a big fan of random-shaped die-cuts. I do like how the numbers are nice and big to help drive home the fact that there is a list they're referencing. And keeping with the blue, we have Bowman reprints with blue refractor borders. I'm so tired of reprints that I can't even bother to say any more about them.

Finally, we've come to what's probably the worst development so far this collecting season. Topps has decided to introduce minis into the Bowman line. Their reasoning is obviously... who knows, but here they are. They're an odd size, they're chrome, they're refractory, they're prospect-ory. I wish somebody with power at Topps could exercise some willpower and stop spreading things across every release like this. It's really getting old.

Overall, I'd feel better about the 2013 release if it all weren't so simliar to 2012. The base and prospect designs look like comps that didn't get picked up last year or were just saved away for a future release. I understand keeping some things consistent but this comes across as a little too lazy.

Base cards: 7/10
Parallels: 6.5/10
Prospects: 8/10
Inserts: 6/10
Minis:4/10
OVERALL: 6.3/10

2013 Clubhouse All-Stars

The MLB All-Star ballots went live a week or so ago so I thought it would be a good time for the 2013 installment of Clubhouse's All-Star insert. This is a 74-card set that features all the players named to the 2012 all-star rosters, whether voted in by fans, selected by managers or named as injury replacements. The design kind of follows the Clubhouse base set but with a few embellishments. The most prominent one is the shiny silver concentric star cluster in the bottom right corner. That foil is also present in the ALL-STAR title along with the player name and position/league. The red and blue motifs respective to each league is consistent with last year's version along with the annual Spirit Award Winners designs. Instead of the mowed field background from the base design, I simply kept the isolated players full-color and had the blurry background fade into their league color.

For the back side, a player portrait fills the negative space from the star shape in the upper left corner while the concentric stars fill the color underneath. The NL and AL logos are in the upper right corner with the league's all-star roster listed below with the starters and reserves designated. It's kind of a de facto half-checklist. On the left, below the player name/position/team is a brief write-up (lorem ipsum here since I was feeling too lazy to write.)

Again, I don't understand why Topps doesn't make an All-Star insert instead of relegating it to the Update set where it's basically the same base card with the ASG logo slapped on. Explain to me how at 70+ card insert with the best players (from all 30 teams) doesn't trump another nebulously-themed insert with yet more retired legends (Yankees)? Blargh.

2013 Spirit Deluxe

Directly on the heels of the low-end offering from Spirit comes the singular high-end release. It's kind of a cross between Stadium Club and something like Tribute, only with out the avalanche of randomly numbered parallels.

Like last year we have full-bleed photos on a glossy stock with silver foil accents. The team logo sits in the center, flanked by three team-color swatches. The subtle knit texture from last year makes another appearance. Beneath it all is a soft white fade leading from the bottom edge to keep things from getting too harsh.

For the back we have the player photo taking up most of the top half with a solid black background below. The team-color polygons from the front make an appearance here to tie together both sides. Underneath the name, position and team is a brief write-up of the player's 2012 season.

Being a high-end set, we also have an autograph and relic variation. The auto just has the white fade up a little further from below. For the relic, I figured it would be nice to have a nice big swatch for such a set. The semi-circle allows for a bigger patch without intruding too much into the photo.

I'm not a big fan of the idea of spending so much for a box of something like Tribute or Triple Threads to where all that matters is the autos or relics as the base cards barely register any notice. The Deluxe set would have a sizable base set with the hits coming like every few packs or something. A standard pack would have 6 base cards with and come with either a pair of inserts or a hit, with relics being about twice as common as autos. I think that would place the price somewhere around $10-$15 a pack, which is still a lot but not ridiculous. To me, that's about as high as I'd like to go on "high-end."

REVIEW: 2013 Topps Opening Day

 

It may be a few weeks into the season but I'm just not getting around to reviewing some cards again. Opening Day is Topps' lowest-end release geared towards getting younger collectors excited for the start of the new MLB season. I'm gonna pass over the base design since it's the same as the flagship series with only the silver foil subtracted and the MLB Opening Day logo added (plus some nice derp-face.) So let's move onto some of the inserts.

The blue-border inserts are a little different this year. Topps must have decided that the Emerald Sparkle from Series 1 was so nice they should try it in blue. I really like this decision as the blue they chose is really vibrant and pretty. Plus, it keeps us from getting them mixed up with the Walmart exclusive blue-bordered parallels. The Ballpark Fun insert features a lot of smiling and/or pie-covered faces which is best-suited for a release like this. We have a swirly team-color section at the bottom with a familiar mowed-grass pattern. Two complaints about this design: I've seen this free cursive font a lot of places so it kind of bugs me that Topps couldn't find a more refined alternative; secondly, the white grunge-feather border seems really unnecessary since the rest of the elements are decidedly clean (minus the pie face.) They've also updated the 3-D Opening Day Stars insert. Returning are the round edges and lenticular surface, but the rest of the design has been refreshed. I think it's an improvement from last year's design with more room for the photo and fewer unnecessary flourishes.

Next we have the Superstar Celebrations cards, which were included in last year's set. These are basically team-wide mobbings of players following what I presume to be walk-off hits. Design-wise, they're pretty standard with red bars across the top and bottom with some silver foil to add some sparkle. Topps decided to keep the fun elements to the photographs and play the rest pretty standard with works I suppose. Compare that to the Play Hard inserts which feature guys in the middle of some 'gritty' baseball moments such as sliding home, stealing bases or laying out to make a catch. The edges have been grunge-feathered which helps with the theme and stays away from a standard design.

I know the target for this set is a lot different than the rest of Topps releases and not all collectors even bother with it, but I usually enjoy spending $10 to take a look at something different like this. Design-wise, Opening Day seems to have a better rate of non-misses than even Topps' flagship. Everything is from decent-to-good and decidedly non-stuffy. In other words, it's fun.

Base cards: 4/5
Blue Parallels: 5/5
Ballpark Fun: 3/5

Opening Day Stars: 4/5

Superstar Celebrations: 3/5

Play Hard: 3.5/5
OVERALL: 3.75/5

2013 Clubhouse

With spring training and the World Baseball Classic in full swing, my mind is definitely focused on baseball again, which hopefully means more frequent design posts. It'll be interesting to see if I have any fresh ideas after a year or if I'll fall into the same patterns like Topps does on occasion. Anyway, here's a look at the 2013 Clubhouse series. This is meant to be the low-end, Topps Opening-Day-esque product in the Spirit line. Like last year's design, it's a bright and colorful, no-frills design.

The front of the cards feature an action shot cutout of the player on top of a team-colored background with an outfield grass pattern. On the bottom is a bar with the secondary team color and a wood pattern. With the player's last name big, their first name and position/team are found above and below. I always find it important to include team/position on base designs, especially for a product marketed towards those learning the game. Alternating corners from card to card, the team's primary logo is the final element of the front design.

For the back, we've got a full-color player photo to the right and the player name/bio on the left. The grass pattern from the front makes it way to the back, this time in its natural green state. The bottom portion sees a big block of team color with a big chunk of career stats on top.

Keep an eye out for a few Clubhouse inserts coming up. I'll probably do another All-Stars design but hopefully I'll find some inspiration for some new and different insert ideas.