2024 Clubhouse

We're a week into the 2024 MLB season and somehow I've yet to see a single inning of baseball. I guess this is the reality when you have a one-year-old to focus on. I've been keeping up with the league as best as I can through social media and the MLB app but it hasn't been easy. Luckily, I've been working ahead a bit on my 2024 designs and it's already time for the 2024 Clubhouse set.

White border return with splashes of the team primary and secondary colors. There's a little bit of a pennant motif that pairs really well with the Clubhouse logo. Each photo finds space to break out of the frame a bit and overlap the name bar a least a little, though there are places like the Harold Ramírez card where it interacts with the name a bit more.

The vibe here is very "early 90's Score" which I've always been personally partial to. If Topps were to shoot for this with the Big League product, I think the response would be a lot more positive than what they've been getting.

2024 Spirit Base

With Spring Training up and running, it’s time to share my 2024 Spirit base design.

I believe this is the first time I’ve shied away from using some element of the team logo on a Spirit base design. The team names are big and stretched across the bottom of the card, overlapping a spectrum of the team colors. Tucked inside an opaque strip are the player names and positions. That leaves plenty of room for the photograph to be the main focus of the card. While simple, I find the design to be rather bold with the vibrant colors and the large team names.

The backs are vertical as well with plenty room for full-career stats like Machado here. Team logos make an appearance on the back so they’re not completely absent from this year’s set. All in all, this is a pretty clean design for me as I’ve been using a lot of textures and effects in stuff the past few years. Not sure if this is an outlier or not but it was nice to do something a little different. Stay tuned to see what’s next.

2023 Pennant

Finishing up my 2023 designs is Pennant, the “retro” set in the Spirit family. I went with a 70s-ish look for this year’s design and for the first time kept the color palette limited to around 8 colors rather than doing team-specific colors like I usually do. While there is some overlap from team-to-team (I mean, there are so many red and blue MLB teams), I was able to keep teams in the same division from having a duplicate palette.

The photos also have undergone a treatment making them look less modern. It helps put the design in the right era and really drives home the “retro” feel in relation to the rest of the Spirit releases.

2023 Clubhouse

Before the 2024 designs start to drop, here’s a look at my 2023 Clubhouse set. This is meant to be the “fun” set for low-budget collectors. I tried to ramp up the fun here by featuring as many out-of-the-ordinary photos as I could.

I think the Randy Arozarena one is probably my favorite, though the Ha-Seong Kim one is pretty great, too. Design-wise, these are meant to “connect” from card to card as you can see in the grid up there. The colored circles will line up at the edges, à la 1990 Topps. That means that not every, say, Mets card will have the logo on the right side. The next card in the checklist would have it on the left, then right, and so on. I just did the teams like this so you get the gist.

The player names arch along with the logo slice which is nice to have instead of on a straight line like usual. The position and team name do run next to it on the secondary color block to help balance the palette a little.

Overall, I think these strike the right balance between being fun but not too crazy, with a big assist from the photography. Bright and colorful without anything too over the top. I’d have been a big fan of something like this as a kid.

2023 Spirit Base

Sneaking this in before the ball drops on the year, here’s a look at my 2023 Spirit base design for every team.

As it’s tradition by now, the design features a full-bleed photo the visual elements color-coded by team. The look on this year is sort of a triangular scroll with the player name position in the middle with the team logo on the left wedge and the Spirit logo on the right wedge. I added a bigger triangle to the bottom right corner to help balance the composition and also add even more team-identifying elements.

Like last year, I had a few different designs I tried out before arriving at this one. Here are the ones that didn’t make the cut.

The last two here were riffs off the same basic hook with the last one winning out. Ultimately, though, it couldn’t top the design I chose in the end.

I’ll try to do some more design dumps before the new year to show I haven’t been completely slacking. Hopefully 2024 will allow me more time to get back on the horse here.

What's Up?

Well, it’s been almost a year now since my previous blog entry. I know the “sorry I haven’t posted a while” thing is a bit of a trope but I’ve had a pretty good excuse for my absence.

I’ve been taking care of this little rat since last February. Say hello to Augustus, or Auggie as we call him. He’s completely changed our lives over the past 8 months in numerous ways. Mostly as it pertains to this blog, it means a lot less time for me to make fake baseball cards and share them with the world. Can you blame me, though? I mean, look at that chubby little face. He’s so fun and cute and funny and sweet. And even when he’s being a big baby, I’m happy to be spending my time with him.

But, as he’s gotten older and we’ve adjusted to our new home life, I have found myself with a bit more free time to piddle around designing. While I won’t be posting with the same frequency as before, I will find the time to share some of my work now and again. I have a bit of a backlog to get posted here but 2024 will most likely bring a new normal with it. Just wanted to check in and show off what I think is by far my best creation thus far.

Mocktober, Pt. 2

November is here, which means a chance to gather all of my Mocktober designs from this year’s MLB Postseason. Just like last year, I created a unique card design for every postseason game featuring the “player of the game” for each contest. With the expanded playoff format this year, I knew I’d be doing more cards than previous years. Luckily, the way each series played out there weren’t an overwhelming number of extra games. The final count was 40 cards this year compared to 37 last year.

Jeremy Peña was the most featured with 4 individual cards. That makes sense since he was the ALCS and World Series MVP. Yordan made it onto 3 cards (with Peña getting a cameo on that final WS card). There were a couple of firsts for me this time around. Thanks to the Phillies’ historic homer-fest in Game 3 of the World Series, I did my first 5-player design. And then the following night, Cristian Javier and 3 other Astros pitchers combined for a no-hitter. In trying to figure out a way to feature them all without making another multi-player card, I focused on Javier while giving the rest of the crew the old hologram treatment. Thanks to some Photoshop tutorial vids on YouTube, I feel like I did a decent job with the hologram effect.

Looking at the whole lot now, it looks like I had better ideas as the postseason went on. I think that’s almost exclusively thanks to the number of games happening each day in the first round. That old adage “done is better than perfect” was definitely in play there. But this whole exercise is precisely about churning out ideas and trying out different things. All of them aren’t going to be great, but they’re all valuable.

2022 Pennant

There is no baseball until Friday. We have only 4-7 games of 2022 baseball left. Seems like a perfect time to get around to posting the rest of my 2022 Spirit stuff (though I’m sure I’ll be doing that well after the World Series, too). I’ve done the Spirit base set, the Clubhouse set, and a smattering of inserts for both. Next up is the Pennant design.

If you’ll recall, Pennant is the “retro” set. I use that as a vague direction to basically go for whatever non-modern vibe I feel like rather than trying to focus in on a specific era or set from the past. Anything that’s not objectively modern or contemporary will usually work for the brand.

There’s a look at the design spread across all 30 teams. White(ish) borders with team color cameo-style photo frames. I tried a few different looks for the frame details before sticking with this here. Some were too plain, some too gaudy. I think this hits the mark. I also did a “retro” treatment on the photos to make them look a bit old, though didn’t go the full Gypsy Queen route. I wanted to make sure the card were still bright and colorful.

Not sure if I’ll get around to doing inserts for this set, but I think the base design here is probably one of the most solid I’ve done. I have a couple of recurring insert themes I could easily revisit if the mood strikes. Stay tuned I guess.

2022 Spirit Award Winners

Other than when I’m remixing/tweaking previous designs, I try to do my best at being original when making new cards. Sure, there are a lot of intentional nods and references to other designs, but I usually shy away from blatantly lifting someone else’s work and calling it “my” design. But when I saw this tweet from MLB on Twitter, I couldn’t help but think what a good card design it would make.

It’s a nice presentation of two players on two different teams showing them on equal footing. Though I didn’t do it on last year’s set, I have utilized a 2-up design for the Award Winners insert in past years. This seemed like the perfect way to interpolate this graphic into a card.

Putting the AL and NL Gold Glove and Silver Slugger winners at each position back-to-back fits perfectly. I designated the AL side as blue and the NL side as red, screening back the league logos in the big color boxes on the bottom. I really liked how the original graphic had the skyline/trees in there but I don’t think every MLB city lends itself to that conceit as well as NY and LA do. Other than adding the player names at the bottom and some gold/silver to the scheme, it follows the “inspiration” pretty closely. I did run into the issues of finding photos that fit together as well as the Cole/Trout combo. The Devers/Riley card works beautifully but when it came to finding fielding photos for the Gold Glove guys, it was a bit more challenging since great fielding isn’t always well-confined to a vertical frame. Minor quibbles.

Free Idea Here for the Taking, Topps

So even though the 2022 MLB season is still a long ways from wrapping up, I’ve been looking ahead to 2023 (and not just because the Giants have been a frustrating mess to watch and almost certainly won’t be participating in the expanded postseason this year). See, we’re already past the time when Topps usually reveals the design for the following season’s flagship set. It’s a nice way to break out of the slag of seeing the current year’s design through he numerous releases on which it will be featured (S1, Opening Day, S2, Chrome, Update).

But when Fanatics signed an exclusive deal with MLB to produce cards (among other stuff I believe), it basically meant the end of business-as-usual for Topps and their baseball card stranglehold. While Fanatics did end up acquiring Topps and allowing their legacy to continue, there haven’t been that many noticeable changes in the landscape after the deal was struck. I imagine that’s mostly due to the fact that Topps’ original deal was running through 2022 and the calendar hasn’t turned over yet. But like I mentioned before, “next year” usually starts in the middle of this year when it comes to baseball cards. As it stands here in mid-August, we still haven’t seen what’s in store for 2023.

One thing that’s been pointed out by a few people online is that Topps has followed a pattern of utilizing inset photos on their design every 20 years starting with the 1963 set.

Now, I don’t know if this was intentional on their part, and I’m sure the people around Topps weren’t there in 2003 or 1983, so there’s no guarantee this pattern will continue for the 2023 design. Something tells me that even if the people making design decisions for Topps are aware of the pattern, it’s not going to weigh too much (if any at all) in what they think a 2023 Topps card should look like. BUT, there’s an understanding amongst collectors that the 2023 flagship design should have an inset photo. As a designer, I like having parameters like that as it works as both a bit of a challenge and also some guardrails. So I figured I’d try my hand and making a “contemporary” card design that fit into the legacy.

I decided to try different shapes for each design just to explore the options. While 1963 and 1983 both had just circle inset photos, they went with a general baseball field shape for 2003 which I think works really nice as an obviously baseball identifier. On design 1, I used another common baseball shape (home plate) that works well with portraits. The rest of the design has elements of 1987 Topps (beveled top left border with team logo) as well as some double-stroke borders from various other years.

Design 2 has an inset shape that recalls Hall of Fame plaques though isn’t the exact same shape. I didn’t notice it until someone pointed it out to me on Twitter but this design is very reminiscent of the 1992-93 NBA Hoops set. I was a little embarrassed but then I remembered how awesome that design is and got over it.

I tried a diamond/base shape for design 3 but it doesn’t lend itself to mugshots too well. Perhaps if it were bigger it wouldn’t cut off as much of the photo, but then it would end up throwing everything else off balance. The little bowtie shape to the left and right of the portrait also led to some challenges. I filled one side with the team logo but the position side doesn’t work as well.

And on design 4, I went with a plain old circle because sometimes the obvious choice is the best choice. The rest of the design is pretty basic with a diagonal space for the name/position adding a little dynamism and keep it from retreading 1983’s ground. After I had the basic compositions down, I added some “effects” since Topps can’t not do that. Nothing too obnoxious, just enough to add some depth.

After sharing these with fellow card designers to get some feedback, design 1 emerged as the best of the batch. With some minor tweaks, I built a card for each team to see how the different logos/colors work with the design.

I know these would look more legit if I did some major cropping and HDR-ing of the photos but these don’t look too far off from a possible Topps release. Definitely something closer to what I wish their releases looked like. I’m curious to see how these stack up to what we do end up seeing from the first Topps/Fanatics flagship set.

2022 Spirit All-Rookie Team

Next insert up for the 2022 Spirit set features the All-Rookie Team from the 2021 season. This is basically the Spirit version of the Topps Rookie Cup cards except they’re inserts instead of just the base card with an extra graphic to crowd the design. (This wasn’t always the case with the Rookie Cup cards but as Topps’ flagship designs have gotten busier recently, adding another little element can really be overkill).

The design here is pretty sparse with just a horizontal player photo with the background cut out and screened back in the team colors. And of course the bit All-Rookie Team text separating the two planes. I original had the “ALL-ROOKIE” fill just the regular full-color portion of the photo but it looked a little frazzled with contrasts and stuff, making the actual words hard to read. Instead, I decided to go with a partially-colored photo fill you see here.

As for the full checklist, it may look a bit familiar:

  • C - Tyler Stephenson

  • 1B - Bobby Dalbec

  • 2B - Jonathan India

  • 3B - Patrick Wisdom

  • SS - Wander Franco

  • OF - Randy Arozarena

  • OF - Adolis García

  • OF - Dylan Carlson

  • DH - Ryan Mountcastle

  • SP - Alek Manoah

  • SP - Shane McClanahan

  • SP - Trevor Rogers

  • SP - Luis García

  • SP - Ian Anderson

  • RP - Emmanuel Clase

  • RP - Garrett Whitlock

All of the guys from the Topps Rookie Cup squad make an appearance here. I decided to pad it out a bit more with more starters and relievers since there was a strong crop last year.

There are also autograph variations of these inserts. The open space between the ART text and the player name/position on the bottom is a perfect spot for an autograph

2022 Clubhouse All-Stars

With the 2022 MLB All-Star starters being announced last Friday and the All-Star Break coming up next week, it seems like a perfect time to share my design for the 2022 Clubhouse All-Star insert.

These of course feature the dudes that made the 2021 All-Star squads (in case the post name was a bit confusing). I went for something different than the usual “star” motif that I’ve used in All-Star designs in the past. And instead of having the leagues designated by strictly either red OR blue, this design features both colors equally for both leagues, just changing up their placement in the design to help distinguish between the two teams. The diagonal boxes add some movement to the design while the foil board/chrome space behind the player cutout makes things shiny as nod to these players being stars. Add in the player overlap and these end up being dynamic considering they’re basically just made up of geometric shapes.

2022 Clubhouse

Time for the next release on the 2022 Spirit calendar. Clubhouse is the “fun” set geared towards younger collectors or those not so smitten by modern hobby pillars like autographs, parallels, etc.

These may look a bit familiar as they’re a re-worked version of one of the Spirit base designs I was tinkering with back in January. They received some positive feedback but I felt they didn’t fit the vibe of the Spirit base design I had established in the past 10 years. Luckily, they fit the Clubhouse vibe pretty well with bright colors, some bubbly text and an almost cartoon-ish twisting wave, though some adjustments were made. The obvious change is adding a white border to the cards which instantly places them alongside what a lot of folks consider a baseball card to be. (There’s a reason Topps has added borders back to their flagship design the past two years). Adding borders allowed me to make the team logos a bit bigger. The other change was including the accolades text in the bottom right below the position banner.

Back side of 2022 Clubhouse card for Yordan Álvarez featuring his biological info and MLB career stats.

The backs have the color ribbons at the top with the primary color bleeding off the top edge. Yordan only has 3 seasons under his belt so there’s plenty of room for his full career stats, but for longer-tenured players, they’ll probably have just 10 seasons and full career line.

I don’t have any done right now but there will be some Clubhouse inserts to follow, including the traditional Clubhouse All-Stars. Hopefully some other “fun” ideas come to mind.

2022 Spirit Team MVP

Time for the first insert design to make an appearance. I’ve been doing the Team MVP cards since the very first Spirit set back in 2012. I’m sure I’ve missed a year or two along the way but it’s been the closest thing to a stalwart for the past decade.

Once again, these are relic cards with a jersey or bat swatch comprising the M-V-P text. The design elements mirror the 2022 Spirit base set with team color tabs filled with a brushed metal texture and the same typeface. The only thing new is I set it all at a an angle to add a little verve since these are (presumably) the best players on each team.

2022 Spirit Base (Take Two)

We’re less than a week away from the actual Opening Day for the 2022 season. It’s been a long and tenuous journey but we’re finally (almost) there. A couple months ago, when the lockout was crushingly rolling along, I was desperate from some positive baseball vibes and posted my initial ideas for the 2022 Spirit Base set design.

Since I was a bit on the fence about which design worked best as the continuation of the Spirit “brand” I had established for a whole damn decade now, I also put out a call for feedback which was thankfully received. Even though the design that people had the most enthusiasm for wasn’t the one I ultimately ended up choosing, it was still a valuable exercise. It helped confirm for me which design I thought worked best but also moved me to make some tweaks that I resulted in a better final product.

I went with the “metal tabs” because it simply looks the most “Spirit” in my mind. Colorful, clean design elements, full-bleed photos, team logos, and all the pertinent information presented in a concise, satisfying manner. The aforementioned tweaks are subtle but definitely an improvement. If you need help, I extended the bar holding the player’s first name all the way to the left edge, adding a little bit of a two-tone look. The other one is the dark screened bar on the bottom right that was seen on the first draft for players that obtained some notable accolade in 2021. As I was building the cards, the non-award ones looked empty and imbalanced. So I decided to keep them around for everyone and just have the full team name listed. I know it may seem like overkill to have team logos and the team name both here but I think it’s handy for the instances where the logos don’t share all the details to newcomers (Pirates, Guardians, Braves for example).

As per usual, the card backs contain the same design motif as the front. I decided to pare down the biographical info, cutting stuff like college and draft info and use that real estate for stats instead.

Here’s to an exciting 2022 season! May your favorite players rake/deal, stay healthy and not become an embarrassment for their fans or the league at large.

Baseball Is Back!

As I’m sure you’ve heard, the MLB owners ended their lockout yesterday after reaching agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement with the MLBPA. Even though the league and owners are still set to make a disproportionately large fortune compared to the players (you know, the guys that are actually responsible for what compels people to spend their money and attention on), it’s still nice to have the 2022 season no longer in a coma. After working myself into a teeth-gnashing fury multiple times on Twitter reading the immature, narrow-minded, or greed-worshipping “fans” railing against the players for not taking a shitty deal, I’m ready to turn towards sunnier thoughts.

Before I move on to the “official” 2022 season designs, I decided to put a cap on the 2021 season with my very first printed set. I searched all around online to find a vendor that makes trading cards but kept running into the same limitation: they’ll print you a bunch cheap, but only a bunch of copies of the same card. In other words, you can get like 100 cards cheap, but only 100 of the same card, not a 100-card set. Major bummer. The only place I found an option of printing multiple images on an order was with Moo, but they don’t do the standard 2.5” x 3.5” trading card. I decided to compromise and come up with a 50-card set to print on their square business cards. They’re 2.56” square, so almost the same size as regular cards. Close enough in my book.

So, 50 cards. That sounds like a good number for a “best of” set. Say hi to the 2021 Spirit Stars of Baseball.

Like the all-star squads, every team is represented here. Unfortunately, that means some of the guys who had top-50 performance last year didn’t make the cut. I don’t think there are any glaring omissions other than maybe Acuña and Luis Robert, but their injuries had to be taken into consideration. Because I sure as heck wasn’t going to do 100 of these. The design was labor-intensive with every card requiring me to cut the player out, color-correct the photos, create a halftone background image and then color-theming them each. It’s a colorful set while some teams’ palettes didn’t lend themselves to a really great overprint effect (Padres, Pirates, Rays).

Here are a few photos of the finished product. The paper stock is about the thickness of Heritage and the finish is a smooth matte on both sides. I’m pretty pleased with how they turned out. Unfortunately, the 12-pocket pages I got are just a little too tight to page these up, but they fit into standard penny sleeves and toploaders. I’d try my hand at making more of these if there’s a market for such a thing. There’s still some cost involved that would prohibit me from just printing a bunch and try to push them. But if enough interest was shown, I might ponder another set in this format.

Anyway, welcome back, baseball. Loving you isn’t always easy but I can’t help myself. Play ball!

That's the Spirit

With the owners finally getting serious about making progress to stop the lockout, there’s a bit of a hopeful vibe going in regards to the 2022 MLB season. Even though I’d be perfectly happy to lose games if it means the players getting a fairer deal, it seems like the wheels are moving and things may actually get resolved somewhat soon. All of this is to say that I’ve been working towards my 2022 Spirit set design.

This is year number 11 for me in doing this fake card company. And as you can expect, having just a singular person in charge of all the design decisions can lead to a bit of burnout. Maybe not burnout so much as the well getting a little bit shallow. While I’m not tied to 70 years of history and nostalgia like Topps, there are a few consistent guidelines I’ve imposed on myself through the years to help rein in the brainstorming a bit. For the Spirit flagship set, it’s been stuff like full-bleed photos, design elements that use actual team colors, and a solid composition that’s interesting enough without having to lean on “effects”. On that last bit, I do add some textures/effects to the design but only afterwards to help the cards look contemporary to the era instead of flat like the “golden era” of cards.

All told, I ended up with 4 different designs to weigh and ultimately choose. They all have their merit but none of them were jumping out at me, screaming “THIS IS THE ONE.” So, I made a Twitter poll in an attempt to narrow down the good and the bad. Let’s go through them one by one.

The first crack at it was this one I dubbed “metal tabs” in said Twitter poll. There were a few Spirit designs that are somewhat similar to the basic bones here. It’s a bar across the bottom of a full-bleed photo with team colors added to the shapes, team logo and the player name plainly but tastefully included. The rounded edges to the color blocks give this a little bit of a late 90s/early 00s feel, especially the screened accolades tab on the bottom right for applicable players. Compositionally, I’m really happy with how I’ve resolved the task of included all of these informational elements. The only flourishes are the metal textures and the beveling around them I added to make everything a little more contemporary. It’s a solid design but there must’ve been something missing because I kept on plugging away with others after putting a bow on these.

My next stab (“target practice”) was the simplest of the bunch. I took a page out of the 92 Stadium Club playbook and had just the smallest little imposition of design rising up from the bottom corners. Keeping with the Spirit standards, the tab became the team primary color. I added a little circle tab for the logo and connected both elements to make it look like a little spinner thingy. For the names, I had to find a typeface that was somewhat condensed to begin with since the tab wasn’t super wide. I went with one that had a variety of weights and widths (Dharma Gothic) because, as you can seem from the Vladito card, there are some really long names that would show up across the whole set. It definitely looks better on TUCKER and INDIA, but it passes on GUERRERO, JR. With the tab already crowded, I had to use the circle for the player position and didn’t find a good spot for the accolades. This was the winner on the Twitter poll, which totally took me by surprise. Mostly because this is the least designed of the group.

The third bunch here (“take off”) was what I figured would win the Twitter poll. It ended up getting the fewest votes… So it may be time to pack it up, Ross. I guess I might have been unduly influenced by the knowledge that this one took me the most time to design. Not the final product, but the journey from idea to finished design. There’s still a lot I favor here. It does the best job balancing the colors. The names are more readable here than the previous two designs. I dunno, it just scratches that itch for me of being nice and compact without being boring. The accolades treatment really works for me, too. Maybe people didn’t like it because it looks like something else I can’t place? Who knows. The only thing that jumps out at me is the fact the design elements reach the two bottom corners, which is something I’ve done more than once before.

Finally, we have “bubble waves,” which is the outlier of vibes in the group. It’s unabashedly more playful than the other entries, with the big colorful waves rolling off the left and right edges. The big blocky text for the names is different, too, as the other cards featured more condensed typefaces. So while this is definitely not a Spirit flagship design, it did prove to be popular enough that I’ve already decided it fits perfectly with the Clubhouse feel. You’ll be seeing it on this blog in the future, with some modifications to fit that line even more appropriately.

With all of that to chew on, there’s still some work to do before I “officially” unveil the 2022 Spirit flagship design. I’m not sure if I should do with the masses and tweak the “target practice” design or go with one of the others by executive order. Regardless of which path I take, there’s still another 26 teams to make cards for along with a card back or two. And while progress has been made by the MLB and MLBPA, I’m guessing there will be plenty of time before I make that official post. See ya then!

Goodbye, 2021

Happy New Year, all. As many do when the calendar turns over at the end of December, I’m looking to let go of the past and look forward to the future. So here’s a look at some of the 2021 Spirit cards I made that didn’t quite get polished enough for a proper post.

First up is the Spirit Deluxe Duos dual autograph cards. Not a lot to these other than adjusting the elements of the Deluxe base design to accommodate two players and their sigs. The primary/secondary team color marble spaces add a little bit more interest here.

Next we have the Spirit Hall Marks insert, featuring guys that are approaching some statistical milestones that are close to shoo-ins for induction. Now, I really doubt Nelson Cruz gets the call, but the fact he’s just 2 average seasons away from 500 is kind of an eye-opener. And of course, Max got his 3,000 Ks this year (though in a different jersey). As for the design, the cool thing here would be the embossed placard portrait that mimics the actual plaques in the hall. They’d look a lot better printed than I could render them here.

Lastly, this WARriors insert didn’t really make it past the first draft stage. There’s not a lot of “there” there, but I figured I’d share rather than memory-hole it. Plus, Gausman’s not a Giant anymore, so I can’t exactly resurrect it for 2022. Assuming there is baseball in 2022…..

Anyway, those are the loose threads of 2021 neatly tied up here in one post. I’m not sure what the whole Spirit project will look like in 2022, but I’m guessing I’ll start getting the itch in a month or so to start working on a new Spirit base design. Beyond that, I’m open to anything.

2021 Spirit Award Winners

Now that the 2021 MLB season is over and all the awards have been handed out, I figured it’d be good to show my Spirit insert honoring the 2020 Gold Glove and Silver Slugger winners.

Once again, these feature the same design for both leagues and both accolades with the foil and color elements differentiating between Gold Glove / Silver Slugger and NL (red) / AL (blue), respectively. It was an accident that the players I picked for the GG samples here have team colors that match their league designations so well. Hopefully it doesn't distract from the design too much, which is pretty simple as it is. In the past, I’ve gone with both “buttoned-up'“ and kinda “out there” vibes, so these clean cards fit in with their predecessors fairly well.

Mocktober

Well, the 2021 MLB season has officially come to an end with the Braves winning the World Series earlier this week. And even though I didn’t watch a single game of final series, I was followed along the entire postseason thanks to my Mocktober project. I did this in 2019 but without the clever name. Basically, whomever is the player of the game for each potential contest, I would make a card featuring them the following day. Each design would be something completely new for me (no leftovers, repurposed designs, etc.). Then I’d add it to a thread on Twitter and watch the 1s of likes just roll in. The purpose of the whole thing is to keep my creativity flowing and try out new stuff. Occasionally, something good-to-great would break through. And then of course there were a few flops here in there. But the schedule and volume of games dictated that I wouldn’t spend too much time on a particular card, so the misfires can be excused. If you didn’t happen to follow along on Twitter or maybe missed a post here or there, I’ve collected all the final 37 images here.

The styles here run the gamut, from retro to modern, bordered to full-bleed, clean to overdone. Seeing them all here side-by-side for the first time, it’s easy for me to pick out which ones would work for a full set and which would be one-offs or inserts. I do know this year I seemed to design the cards around the photos a bit more often than I usually do. I guess that’s understandable given that the player featured is pretty much set in stone and the images are limited to a single game. Normally, I have a season’s worth of photos to comb through so I can find the right one to fit a design.

So long, 2021 season. Hopefully the 2022 campaign starts on schedule or close to it. I’m willing to sacrifice a bit as a fan, though, if it means the players get a better shake and the owners reign of terror gets toned down a bit. (Not holding my breath on that one.)