I’ve had these designs in the can for a while but figured I should probably get this posted before the trade deadline. In case you haven’t been following my projects or need a refresher, Clubhouse is the “value” or “budget” line of Spirit cards. Think Topps’ Big League of today or Upper Deck’s Collector’s Choice of yore. These are meant to be fun, colorful and appealing to all ages, not just dudes in their 40s or older.
The design here is pretty simple with rounded rectangles showing off the team colors. Each color gets a pair of tabs going off the edge of the card, breaking the white borders but still keeping everything crisp and clean. I found space for the name at the top, which is something I’ve noticed goes a bit against the grain lately. Even with my own designs, I find myself placing the names towards the bottom of the card. Can somebody pinpoint the birth of that trend?
At the bottom in the center is the team logo, which should be safe to overlap the edge of the photo there and not cover up too much of the action. Flanking the logo is the team abbreviation on the left and player position on the right. The 3-letter abbreviation is a thing I’ve tinkered with on a few designs but it’s definitely a placeholder here. Honestly, I just needed something on the opposite side of the position to keep the symmetry going. I love the rest of the design so much, I wasn’t going to let a little detail like that derail things.
The back mirrors the front pretty closely with the tabs lining up the same on both sides. There’s more of the primary color here to make room for the player bio next to his mug shot. I trimmed the career stats down to just the most recent 5 seasons. My reasoning here is this isn’t the flagship set and I’d have to sacrifice a lot of other design options just to accommodate more columns of numbers. And really, I don’t need more obstacles standing between me and a finished design.
Overall, there’s something very pleasing to me about this design. Something about the basic-ness speaks to me in a “well duh, why isn’t this already a thing?” kind of way. Big solid colors are throwback to cards of the past, but somehow this isn’t all that hokey (to my eyes at least).