My 2002 remix brings the first drastic change from the Topps original (though probably not too drastic if you follow me on Twitter….). BUT, even if you saw that preview back then, there’s still something new for you here.

The most obvious change is the mustard yellow borders are gone. I don’t think they’re as notorious as the 1991 Fleer yellow borders, but they seem to have a bad reputation. That’s probably going to be the biggest no-brainer in this whole project. Against the white borders here, the ribbon motif is actually kinda fun and old timey without being cheesy. I redrew them a bit so the white edges make their way to the card borders. I change the font and put the names in white so they pop off the color banners and match the overall cleanliness of the design now. The last move was to replace the redundant “2002 Topps” text at the top edge of the photo with the player position since that was absent. It’s a better use of the space left up there to accommodate the ribbon on the left side.

With those tweaks, this easily shoots up towards the top of the list of best Topps designs in my book. They’re bright and colorful without being obnoxious, touch on some standard baseball imagery without being cliché, and do a good job of straddling the modern and vintage eras. Feel free to chime in if you think I’m going a little overboard with that praise.