After a run of 6-straight years with colored borders, Topps started off a new streak in 2004 with white borders on their flagship design. In other words, don’t expect any more border color changes from my remixes.

The biggest change here is probably the dismissal of the silver foil for the team and player name stuff. I really have no issue with foil on white but I decided it was an opportunity to inject some more team color into the mix. I simplified the color border around the photo so it’s now just a solid thick color instead of…. whatever Topps did. I also rounded said borders because having some hard and some soft just didn’t work for me. I tried them all as sharp angles at first but It was too harsh.

Though I had some initial internal resistance, I decided to soldier on and keep the little player figures in the bottom left corner. These are arguably the defining design characteristic of this set, so I felt compelled to keep them. Luckily it’s hard to tell how poorly they’re drawn at such a small size. Inside the little figure box, I switched out the uniform number on the original with the player position. That allowed me to make the name a bit bigger, which was definitely an issue with the original.

All in all, I think this is probably one the best examples of fixing something up without really changing the spirit of the design. More than anything, Topps needs an editor to chip away at some of the extra-ness they’re prone to deploy.