2025 Spirit Team MVP

Back with another installment of the Spirit MVP insert set.

Once again we have some relics incorporated into the design with MVP in big letters. They also feature design elements carried over from the 2025 Spirit base design. In addition to the relics, the background behind the players are meant to have that “foilboard” look, making them fancier and shiny. Small little detail here of me trying to match the relic to the player photo. The last element is the big team cap logo on the right side to help fill some of that empty space these horizontal photos dictate.

2025 Deluxe

Wrapping up the 2025 Spirit lineup here with the “high-end” release, Deluxe. These are meant to be more elevated and timeless. My goal here was to feature the premiere player for each team with a closer crop of the image and some classy design elements.

There’s some gold foil for embellishment to pair with a colorful leather texture and an elegant font. I tried to sprinkle in a bit of variety on the photos, hence the periodic action shots sprinkled in. In hand, the gold foil hat logos would really pop. I’d probably go with a really thick stock and emboss the foil and maybe even some varnish. Something to really make these look high-end.

2025 Clubhouse

It’s almost a month into the season and I’m already releasing my 3rd set design. Perhaps the surprising success of the Giants is motivating me to get things done. Anyway, here’s a look at the design for the “fun, youth-focused” set, Clubhouse.

This year’s set is even more colorful than usual with no white borders and very little white overall. There are a lot of circles, however, with the player photos surrounded by a secondary color ring and then another circle for the team logo in the bottom right corner. I tried to use a team’s primary color for the big color portion of the bottom though the red/blue teams are always a bit hard to sort out the primary. The player names are big enough I decided to use the secondary color rather than adding white. There are some where it’s kinda iffy but I think there’s enough contrast for them all to be legible.

There’s something satisfying about the simplicity here. Circles are subconsciously comforting and the solid colors (no effects or textures like I often add) pack a big visual punch. I had a fun time finding photos that fit well within the circle frames. The Cease and Jones ones stand out in particular.

2025 Pennant

Opening Day is officially here! This is the most excited I’ve been for a baseball season in a few years, thanks to the Giants looking optimistically ok. That and it’ll be nice to have something else filling my social media feed besides the daily horrors of the despicable human feculence current running our country…

Sorry. Let me climb out of that well of despair and share my 2025 Pennant design.

The design is a pretty obvious riff on Topps’ 1958 and 1964 designs. Once again, I’ve gone with a limited color palette rather than true team colors. Having a black stroke around the text, color boxes and then the player images adds a bit of a comic book-y feel I like. Inserts to come as the season goes along. Happy Opening Day!

2025 Spirit Base

Now that Topps Series 1 has hit the shelves and Spring Training is up and running, it’s time to take a look at what 2025 has in store for my fake Spirit brand.

I went borderless once again like I’ve done for the past 14 years now (omg). Photographically, I tried to get a good variety of photos here, sprinkling in some actions shots along with stuff from the sidelines or dugout. Even with the action shots, I tried to pick some with interesting angles or a unique element. The Toglia one in particular is good example of a run-of-the-mill action that’s a little different than what you might typically see on cardboard. Of course the stuff like the Gatorade bath, tv interview, etc., might stand out a bit more.

As for the design, there are basically three elements all reflecting each team’s identity — the ribbon running from edge-to-edge with the player name, the secondary bar below holding the team name and player position, and then the wedge with the team logo in the bottom left corner. The 45-degree angle adds a little drama along with the stroke of the underneath bar overlapping the ribbon. There’s a little texture and depth in there but overall it’s a rather clean design.

I already have my designs for the Clubhouse, Pennant and Deluxe sets squared away. Just need to finish putting together all the cards and I’ll be posting those in the near-ish future. Maybe even before Opening Day!

Baseball Season (ish)

After the Eagles finished dismantling the Chiefs in the Super Bowl Sunday night, my Bluesky feed was full of posts declaring it “officially baseball season.” Pitchers and catchers are trickling into Spring Training facilities in Arizona and Florida. And with Topps Series 1 hitting the shelves on Wednesday, it’s fair to say it is indeed baseball season.

Fanatics released images of the 2025 flagship design last month and from what I’ve seen, the response has been pretty middling, at least compared to the near-universal praise the 2024 design received. I haven’t really seen anybody say they absolutely love the design but I also don’t really remember any intense hate for it either. That’s pretty much where I sit as well. But like past years, I do have a few tweaks I think would help the design overall.

On the left is the original Topps design and on the right my “remix.” The first thing I addressed was the big team name text on the left side. The outline on the original is just too plain hard to read. I don’t know if the physical cards will change a bit with the printing process (like the metallic shine on 2024’s neon elements) but on-screen, it’s a bit of a mess. I decided to place the text “inside” the colored bars but have them be a bit transparent so there’s a little depth there. Speaking of the colored bars, I tweaked the curves of the corners just a bit so they look “truer.” And I swapped the Yankees’ color palette to blue and red rather than the blue and gray Topps chose. Not sure why they want to make the cards less colorful, especially since the Yankees primary logo has more red than anything else in it.

The next area of adjustment is the bottom bar where the player name is. I’m just really not a fan of the treatment they gave it. The first name outlined with the drop shadow is a bad solution to a problem of their own doing. And the last name is a bit too thin weight-wise for my taste. They also seem to have made the gray bar fade out towards the bottom, adding the possibility of some legibility issues for some photos. My fix was to make it a solid bar as part of the border and then switch the typeface from Eurostile Wide to Eurostile Condensed Bold. And to keep with their motif, the first name is outline-only. The last name should be more prominent than the first in my opinion. Their original design has the opposite.

The one element that I have seen a lot of people praise the position indicator field icon in the bottom right corner. I kept that the same except updated the colors and then shaved the little tab off the bottom so the color border is straight across. After moving the Topps logo to the upper right corner, I called this one done. Nothing too drastic but enough little improvements I think makes a big difference overall.