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 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.

Welcome to 2021

In honor of the first Spring Training games of the (pre)season, I figured today would be a good day to share the Spirit 2021 designs. I’ve decided to scale back from last year and just make a card for each team here instead of making one for every single card on the checklist. This means I’ll have more time to tackle other designs like inserts for this set as well as some of the other releases I’ve done in the past (Clubhouse, Pennant, Deluxe). I also tackled just a couple of the backs — one pitcher, one batter — since those may get a little boring looking at 30 in a row.

As I try to do with the Spirit line, the base design features full-bleed photos with team colors and team logos as well as the player name prominently featured (and easy to read). The home plate shape for the logo took me in the direction of these diagonal elements for the team colors and name plates. The idea is for the design to add some visually interest and give the info room to live without getting in the way or overpowering the photo. Ryan Mountcastle and Dylan Carlson have the standard RC logo I’ve been using on Spirit cards for years, tucked into the top corners to balance the design as a whole and not crowding the bottoms.

The backs are full-color with the same colorful diagonals from the front. I pared down the bio information so it could fit in the secondary bar and leave room for a fuller career stat record. I also reintroduced a feature from previous years where a player’s accomplishment from the previous season can be easily highlighted (Maeda’s All-MLB 2nd Team honor, Solano’s Silver Slugger award). Obviously every player won’t have such a notation but the space will still work if empty.

As 2020 taught us, plans are futile and we’re all living in a nonsensical simulation, but my intention is to have a good number of card design posts in this space throughout the upcoming season. Even as the hobby and world have made some huge shifts in the very recent past, making and sharing these cards is something that brings me joy, so hopefully there’s plenty more to come.

Every Day Is a Holiday

Today is National Baseball Card Day, according to Topps anyway. As I’m sure you’re aware if you’ve made your way to this blog, I’m a big fan of baseball cards — even as an adult. The main call for NBCD is to get collectors into hobby shops and buy cards. Topps facilitates this by providing shop owners “free” packs to distribute to customers for coming in and/or buy cards. Well, since there’s a pandemic going on, the idea of going to a card shop today seems particularly dubious. Still, I try to not be a scrooge for any holiday, let alone one that caters to my interest in particular. So here’s how I celebrated today.

Earlier this week, Topps unveiled the design for their 2021 flagship release. In addition to disappointing many “collectors” by revealing Jo Adell rookie cards won’t be in any 2020 product, the reception was overwhelmingly sour. I found a lot of issues with the design and tried my hand at rectifying them a bit to meet in the middle of what Topps decided on and what I consider to be “good”. The finished product still has a few flaws but I’d call it a definite upgrade.

Well, since that day, I’ve been in a card designing mood, leading me to spend my Saturday putting together a few more design ideas for what some might consider a more traditional baseball card look. So here are 4 new designs (2 cards of each) that I think bring to mind some of the rich history of baseball card design without ripping anything off entirely. Hopefully these bridge the gap between traditional and modern.