Grid, Style, & Format

Project 5

Book Subject Research

Choosing a subject is always challenging for me because there were so many options and possibilities for this book. I thought about my biggest interests and hobbies: computers/technology, videos games, and soccer. Computers and video games were really compelling to me at first but I couldn’t imagine creating 8 full content rich spreads.

I spent a lot of my time in high school playing the new Fifa soccer game every year. I could potentially fuse aspects of the game with real life. Every year Fifa releases a “Team of the Year”. This team consists of the 11 best players in the world in their respective positions. I could create my book around this idea of the celebrating this years outstanding players with a game-like twist and feel.

Sketching Ideas & Initial Concepts

In my research I came across some old posters for older iconic players. I loved how the designer took interesting dynamic photos and took the players out of their environments and onto this vintage canvas. For the left side of my spreads, I decided to choose a modern player and create a similar poster like feel with a hopefully a more modern design and vibrant colors.

I didn’t really have many sketches for these left pages because I knew what formula I wanted to follow and each page was basically it’s own project. Each poster is to have the player, their number or club, and a some type of color scheme or pattern that matches their uniform. Sketching unique multiple ideas for all 7 players would be too time consuming.

Since the left side of the spreads were essentially a poster for the current player, I wanted the right side to convey information about that player. Career stats and information such as age, position, nationality, and current club. My challenge would be finding a layout that would be consistent, yet unique, for all the spreads. I wanted a form of consistency for the statistics so that it would tie the book together. Each spread having a different layout with the same information would feel too jarring and lack the cohesiveness I was looking for. Though I still wanted each spread to feel unique, hopefully I could achieve this through different color schemes.

Left Page (Poster)

I wanted to create posters for each player based on the uniform they were wearing in the photos I picked. I also tried to pick dynamic photos and at the very least make dynamic and interesting compositions to really highlight the players.

These first four pages came with relative ease. I didn’t have to experiment too much beyond what you see here. Each kit had a strong colors and an easy enough pattern to build off of. You’ll see the first 3 players have their numbers while the last player has his national flag. I chose to use elements such as the flag instead of the numbers because it felt too repetitive. A lot of these players have the same numbers 10 or 7 because those numbers are typically reserved for the team’s star players. Since this book was only composed of the world’s best star players there was bound to be a lot of repetition with the numbers. I also liked making the distinct differentiation between a club jersey and a national team jersey.

I had a lot more trouble creating unique posters for these last four players compared to the first four. I’m not sure if it was the jersey or the poses, but it wasn’t as easy creating an interesting composition that matched the patterns on the player’s kits. A lot of jerseys are sponsored by the same companies so you’ll see a lot of similar design patters, just in different colors.

Right Page (Info & Statistics)

My initial attempts at the statistics looked like this. I used two colored bars to separate the player from his stats. The colored bars were used for multiple reasons. It would serve as a way to preserve the color scheme created from the left pages. It would also allow me to use pictures that had the players lower portion cut off. A lot of the dynamic and interesting poses typically didn’t have the entire body, so I needed a way to hide the crop.

I liked my initial direction with the icons I created to portray trophies, goals, yellow and red cards, and assists. It had that game-like feel I was going for and I could change the color of the cleats and jersey on each spread to match the color scheme. However, I did not like how I was representing the players club and nationality. In particular, the flags for each player typically didn’t match the overall color scheme. So to have a large flag that could potentially clash with each spread’s color palette was a big negative.

After a bit of thought and tweaking I finally ended up with this. I ditched the two toned color background and bars for a more simple white background. I created unique game-like banners for each spread that could match the jersey color scheme and still hide the crop from the action photos. I retained the bottom four stat icons as I liked the grid it created. As for the player’s club and nationality, I shrunk their size significantly and placed them in little banners behind the players. This felt far less intrusive and additionally the banner added another element of consistency for all the spreads. In this final design, each stat page is consistent in its layout and design while still feeling different enough with the variable colors in the banner, jersey, and cleats.

Cover Page

The cover page and title were really difficult for me. I ended up creating the cover page last as I hoped the spreads would give me an idea of how to wrap the entire book together. The cover had to match the tone and overall look of the inside spreads as it was the first the thing the reader would see.

My first few attempts looked like this. Looking back on what my pages had, they contained a dynamic pose and a banner to show the name. I tried to fuse these two aspects together hoping it would create something decent. As you can see, adding two elements from your book does not guarantee it will make a very appealing cover. On top of that, the title “Living Legends” just felt incredibly cheesy.

I started to do research and saw the famous Michael Jordon logo. This concept was perfect for my book. It took an incredibly famous and dynamic pose but made it flat and modern. The white, red, and black also felt bold and modern. Just what I needed for my cover.

I chose to use the bicycle kick as the pose as that is one of the most iconic ways to score. I also decided to use the same white, black, and red as Jordan did. I played around with different colorings and backgrounds but ultimately opted for the last iteration. As for the actual name, I decided to call it “The Score”. I feel like I’ve heard the name on ESPN but it felt much better than “Living Legends”. The book was about famous players and their statistics so “The Score” felt fitting.

Final Book