SportsDesigner.com

It's Best of SD 2009 Time

The call for entries will go out next week, and due to an anticipated drop-off in interest in the wake of NPD going away and the general morose that has overtaken us all, will stay open through mid-February. Details to come.

Posters in Phoenix

Reduced news hole may be a reality at most newspapers in 2009, but there are often ways to still give readers that "collectible" feel. Maybe you do it online.

At the Arizona Republic, the paper created "posters" for four state championship football teams, which fans can download. Designs by Luke Knox.

The same idea works well for high-school all-area teams, for screen wallpaper or, heck, a Twitter background? Be creative.

Spin the color wheel

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported a couple of weeks ago that, if things had gone differently back in 1966, the Saints might have had a UCLA color scheme. That's right: blue, gold and white.

But the league felt they were too close to other teams, particularly San Diego, so they never went with them.

Instead, it's black and gold, a more dominating palette and worn by a dominating team this season, at 13-0.

Designer Jim Ransdell already blogged about this and did the what-if illustrations. (And yes, I do find that site flattering).

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Speaking of different looks, how do you like the new SportsDesigner duds? Lots of little updates and code improvements for IE, plus a more eye-pleasing color in burnt orange.

2009 Heisman Trophy

Photo by Loren Zemlicka of Wisconsin

Mark Ingram of Alabama wins the 75th Heisman Trophy, the school's first. It was the closest vote result ever. Ingram narrowly beat Toby Gerhart of Stanford.

RollTide.com features a splash page for Ingram, with video.

Sunday's front page of The Birmingham News.

ESPN.com offers a history of the Heisman in a special feature.

Back in time: One of the cool things with the Sports Illustrated Vault is you can see every page in the issue they are highlighting. In this case, it's the Nov. 27, 1989, issue. Andre Ware won the Heisman.

Designer on crisis mode

Visual journalism has been on a wild ride in 2009. What roles do designers play today, and in the digital future?

Grant Friedman, founder of Colorburned, posted a piece on "Surviving and Thriving after a Crisis."

The economy has forced many designers from the job market and forced a lot of us to rethink or get creative in terms of how we earn our living.

The post includes views from fellow designers/bloggers. Not earth-shaking stuff, but it's a worthwhile read.

Classic football posters

If you're looking for bowl game inspiration, classic posters and programs are great for design ideas.

Check out these and many more (for sale also) at HistoricFootballPosters.

113th Civil War

Oregon won the 113th Civil War, and the first where the winner was assured a Rose Bowl berth, knocking off Oregon State 37-33. Here are a couple of pages from the Eugene Register-Guard, thanks to Rob Romig.

Hoping to add some pages from the Oregonian, stay tuned.

Oh yeah, the Ducks haven't won the Rose Bowl since 1917 or something. Had to mention that.

Digital design

All the benefits of digital, and all the style of print. Sports Illustrated shows off its future dream on a tablet device, which could be coming in 2010, if you like those Apple rumors.

Future of Washington Times sports in doubt

I don't see any official word, but it looks as if The Washington Times will not have a sports section, or sports staff, in about 60 days. That'd put designer Harrison Goodman on the market (and what a healthy market it is).

The Times told its newsroom Wednesday to expect a staff reduction of at least 40 percent and a new emphasis on its core, which would be conservative political news.

Slevin would not confirm that the metro and sports sections will be dropped, saying no final decisions have been made. But with the Times pursuing a national audience, he said, coverage of the Washington Nationals or suburban governments would "be of less interest, if any, to someone in Spokane."

Wishing our best to Harrison and his cohorts at the paper.

2014 Olympics logo

The 2014 Winter Olympics will be held in Sochi, Russia, and the official Games emblem was released this week. It's the first to use a Web address in the logo.

Early reviews of the emblem are not kind. It certainly plays off the current trend of san serif lowercase lettering, but the font is a little retro.

"The typographical mirroring of the 'h/y' 's/z' and '0/o' feels clumsy, however, and undermines the symmetry of the logo. But as ever, it's the experience not the logo that will make this brand."

That's the view of London design agency manager Fred Burt.

Dallas' big list

As much as we sometimes hate to admit it, fans love "list" stories. Sunday's Dallas Morning News featured the mother of 'em: The Top 50 Cowboys of All Time.

Tom Landry topped the voting list, which was created using an extensive panel of editors and writers.

Great doubletruck. Download it and the depth chart below for a closer look.

Download pdf of CowboysTop50_list
Download pdf of CowboysTop50_depth

Good, Bad & Ugly

Here's the ACC preview cover from the Duke Chronicle. Always nice to see a concept and not just a couple of players and a swooshy Photoshop background.

Not hardly scary, like this ...

The Army Rifle team media guide.

And hideous: Michigan Hockey's Holiday Gift Guide. Lovely use of the cutout filter.

And, uhhh, wow. Cover to Updown Magazine's 13th issue. Appears to be a web product for snowboarders and their snowboarder ... habits.

All spotted at issuu.com.

Jimmie Johnson x4

Sprint Cup driver Jimmie Johnson wins a record fourth consecutive championship. ESPN.com produced a multimedia piece detailing "eight moments that defined his championship run."

Lazy designer's guide to success

Pentagram's Michael Bierut and his seven steps to success:

• 1. Keep it simple.
• 2. Don't reinvent the wheel.
• 3. Don't reinvent the wheel, rotate the tires instead.
• 4. Do as you're told.
• 5. Steal.
• 6. Once you've come up with something, never let it go.
• 7. Make other people do the work.
  

The linked article is excerpted from a lecture. Be sure to read the details, I just did the bullet points.

He Went For What Down On His What Yard Line?

Some Monday front pages from the Boston Globe and Indy Star after Sunday night's 35-34 Colts win over the Patriots:

Thanks to Scott Goldman and Brian Gross for these.

1930s design for U.S. team at Olympics

Polo Ralph Lauren is the official outfitter for the U.S. team at the Vancouver Olympics. The look is inspired from the 1930s designs for the team.

A lot of the designs are available for purchase (but they're not cheap, of course).

Great styling choice.

The Lauren site linked above includes video and a glance at the history of the Winter Games. The first Winter Olympics were held in 1924 in Chamonix.

Boxing's top fighter?

Manny Pacquiao and Miguel Cotto fight Saturday night at the MGM Grand in Vegas. These pages ran in the Gulf News and are courtesy designer Douglas Okasaki.

Here in Dubai the Filipino community is large, (Pacquiao) has many fans.

There is talk Pacquiao might run for president in the Philippines.

What's new in Boston

Faced with online competition from ESPN's new local sites, both the Boston Globe and Chicago Tribune have updated their sports sites.

The new Boston.com site features a feed of the latest sports stories, an improved scoreboard, access to archive stories through a team timeline format and, of course, a modern layout. (Big thumbs up on the design, I gotta say).

The Chicago Tribune launched a Breaking Sports site a short while back.

UPDATE: As noted in a comment, the Dallas Morning News has also redesigned its sports site, featuring a list of hot topics and a condensed content area (less scrolling!).

San Francisco Chronicle ups its paper stock

The San Francisco Chronicle debuted a new look today, printing some pages on groundwood-grade paper, which gives them a whiter, somewhat glossy sheen. Might cut out the inky-finger effect, too.

The entire A-section was done in the new paper and it sounds like most section fronts at least will use the paper daily.

I'm sure the designers and photogs were thrilled. I've recently wished publishers would go more upscale with the print product (especially Sundays) and certainly a better grade of paper lends to a premium price for color ads on those pages.

A Getty photog documented things at the press. Check out the images here.

World Series 2009 and final designs to see

Here's the final edition cover from The New York Times as the Yankees win their 27th World Series. Thanks to art director Wayne Kamidoi. The page-topping illustration is credited to Joe Zeff.

The pdf: Download NYTYankees09

And some online covers:

NYTimes.com

ESPN.com: Very cool effect here with a main image at 910 pixels by 376 pixels, spanning the entire content block.

NBCsports.com: avoiding the 27th Heaven hed ...

Yahoo! sports

I'll add more pages and whatnot as we go along ... (UPDATES below)

Newsday

New York Daily News

Canada's National Post

Buffalo News

Washington Post

Canada's Globe and Mail

Mexico City's Adrenalina (Excelsior)

I'm keeping an eye out for a Japanese paper, since Matsui was the MVP ...

Sports Nippon

More World Series pages from Philly

If you're curious how coverage has been looking at The Philadelphia Inquirer for the 2009 World Series games, here's a peek.

The Inquirer has been producing 8-10 page special sections for game reports.

You can actually get a free two-week trial of their digital edition (no credit card info or whatever required), which is how I've been getting these pages.

Wishful thinking

 

Oops. An ad in today's Philadelphia Inquirer.

VisualBaseball

Kevin Dame takes the numbers and crafts his own graphics at VisualBaseball.

Wait 'Til Next Year

Could you give up sports for a year?

No, not YOU, the jaded journalist who dreams of it. I mean you, the diehard sports fan who can cite the 53-man roster of the 1985 Bears, the free-throw percentage of Larry Bird in 1986, or the rotation and relievers of the 1995 Braves?

If you live for sports, could you, in a moment of soul-searching, give it up for a year?

Mathew DeKinder did. And he wrote a book about the experience.

DeKinder's day job is as a designer at the Suburban Journals in St. Louis. That makes him relevant to us, right? He's also a diehard Cardinals fan, an Oklahoma State alum and rabid supporter.

Oh. Right.

He gave up sports from August 2006 until August 2007.

That'd be the year the Cardinals won the World Series.

DeKinder's book was published in August, independently, and he is not only selling it but elaborating on it and sharing excerpts from it at waittilnextyearbook.com. 

He gave up sports. His wife did not. Included in his abstinence was a year off from a dynasty fantasy football league, in which he had one of his friends "stand-in" in his place for the duration.

If I didn't work in sports, I could give it up. But before I started doing that, I know there's no way I could have. It's a fascinating and entertaining read, laced not just with the year-long tale of woe, but with plenty of sports-world observations that lend plenty of insight into the makings of a sports diehard.

2009 World Series

It's Yankees-Phillies for the 2009 World Series. Above are some pages from a huge preview section in Wednesday's Philadelphia Inquirer.

This is an illustration that wrapped a preview section in the New York Daily News. Illustration credited to Ed Murawinski. He's got some more posters, like those below, here.

The New York Times produced a few videos on the Series.

This one features ASE Jay Schreiber talking about the Yankees' Series history.

Sports Illustrated NBA previews, then and now

Gotta love these 1960s NBA covers from Sports Illustrated.

And then, the 2009 NBA preview ...

That's an NBA/E Getty image, by the way.

Phillies in Series: pages from Philadelphia

The Phillies are back in the World Series. Check out some pages from The Philadelphia Inquirer.

A four-page instant edition went to the ballpark after the win (cover above, photo spread below).

Thursday's sports front:

And check out Wednesday's sports front from before the game:

That's some hefty advertising!

Check out Infojocks

Designer Jeremy Yingling runs Infojocks, which specializes in creative graphics for sports.

I started Infojocks straight out of college in an effort to combine my publication design major with two of my passions — statistics and sports. Born and raised in Pittsburgh, the original city of champions, I understood from an early age the passion it takes to be a real sports fan."

A few of his designs are even available as posters to purchase.

Out at home

Beautifully designed cover from today's Star Tribune in Minneapolis, after the Twins were eliminated from the postseason and played their final game at the Metrodome.

Elsewhere, did you see the page from the Indianapolis Star posted by Charles Apple? That's some scary advertising creep.

ESPN "Body" preview

ESPN The Magazine previews its "Body Issue". Wow.