2010 SlangKo’s Heroes of the Diamond: Part II
August 28th, 2009 by slangon
Thinking About Design
So the checklist is not final, but it’s being worked on. I’ve contacted a few folks to get their input as to who from their team they would pick using my 2 man criteria. I’ve heard back from a few, still waiting on others.
In the meantime, since I’ve already made up my mind as to which 2 Mets would make the cut, I figured I could start to plan out what the base set would look like. Anyone who’s been reading this blog or who knows me, knows already that the design is going to be old-timey. That’s a given. But what sort of old-timey do we want?
I think from the moment this idea started to form in my head, I’ve thought it would be the tobacco issue sort of old-timey as opposed to 40’s or 50’s old-timey. I think a lot of this has to do with size of the tobacco issued cards. Somehow having them be little buggers makes them more precious. And I’m thinking more T206 looking than anything else, such as T205 or T204. I like the plain-ness of those type cards. They’re basically a cool image within a plain white frame, with very no-frill type.
The one thing I would like to incorporate from say the T205 design is having information about the player on the back as opposed to just having a ad back there. At this point I couldn’t say whether I would want stats or a biography, or both. I think definitely some sort of short bio. I just love the way old card bio’s are worded and the random facts they choose to divulge. The oldest cards that I personally own are a handful of 1933 Goudey’s. They’re not the Lou Gehrig or Chuck Klein Says… variety, but some of the copy on the back is pretty entertaining. Some excerpts:
From card #14 Henry Johnson –
“Batters used to be afraid to see him go in the pitcher’s box, because he was so wild. In his first six years in the game he hit 57 men with pitched balls.
He has control now and ranks with the top notchers.”
#180 Eddie Moore –
“He is known as Eddie Moore, but his name isn’t Eddie. It is Charley Graham Moore.”
I also think throwing in a dash of old-timey baseball slang would be good.
Since I’ve decided to keep the from design pretty simple and no-frills, I think we can get away with a little bit of room for fanciness on the back. I’ve seen tons of old card back designs and just old designs in general that incorporate all kinds of cool looking frames and doo-dads and whiri-gigs and what-not.
Another design feature I would like to use is hand colored photographs. I mentioned this before, but that’s one of the thing I really loved about the Legends of the Game inserts from this years Topps. Thanks to the quality of sports photography now a days, whatever pictures I end up using would be too stark and sharp. Plugging them straight into some old-timey looking card would look a bit strange, I think. Hand coloring the photos would make them fit a bit better.
So at this point I think I have a fairly good vision in my head of what I would like these cards to look like. And as I said earlier, although the checklist is still in a state of flux, there are some guys who I know I want to include, so LET THE DESIGNING BEGIN!!!
I am in love…