Sorare Card Design 2.0: How 3D Football Cards Came to Life
The 2023–24 Sorare Football season is shaping up to be a truly memorable campaign, and not just because of new gameplay, competition formats, and rewards (including cash prizes!).
This season, for the first time in Sorare history, we’re launching 3D digital player cards across the Sorare Football universe.
It’s been a massive effort years in the making, one in which all areas of the company have collaborated on but championed by our top-notch design team. Steering the creative direction of Sorare cards is exciting while at the same time carries great responsibility to produce compelling, innovative cards that evolve with and build upon previous iterations.
We’re lucky to have a community that cares — we truly value your opinions and feedback — particularly when it comes to card designs. In fact, when we launched the 23–24 cards on Aug. 23 (2D versions), your feedback spurred this blog to explain why and how we took certain design directions for this season.
For this season’s cards, we wanted to further bridge the gap between the digital and real football worlds. Moreover, we asked ourselves: “How can we redefine the boundaries between physical and digital fandom by reinventing the act of collecting football cards?”
Here’s a design-based overview of the 23–24 Sorare Football 3D cards, including answers to some of your feedback on the 2D designs.
Our first 3D Cards
Giving cards a new dimension
From static to living. This season, we wanted to take football cards into a new dimension, making them more interactive, tangible, and desirable. The background of the card is designed to make the card pop in 3D.
We designed it to allow dynamic reflections and lighting (to be fully appreciated when the 3D cards soon go live in our web and mobile apps, first available on iOS). In short, these cards are made to shine! We can’t wait to hear what you think, once those cards land on the marketplace.
How card information is structured
We’ve designed card information in two parts:
- Top: league and season data
- Bottom: player data
This is data that we have to add on the card, contractually speaking. Our goal is to create a more coherent hierarchy of information to discover on the card.
The frame
The cards being 3D, there is now a frame connecting the front and the back of the card. This gives the 3D aspect depth. By adding depth and new lighting techniques, we are giving Sorare cards a tangible quality that breathes life into your collectibles. This is also an area which we’re excited to enhance in future design iterations.
For this launch, we decided to make a bespoke frame for each of Europe’s top leagues (Premier League, Bundesliga, LaLiga, and Serie A). You’ll discover each league-specific frame in the coming weeks.
Note our other partner football leagues will feature a Sorare-branded frame for the 23–24 season. These are engraved, and give a pristine look to the cards. Who knows what else will be engraved in the future!
Player imagery
A key element of the card design is player photography. Scalability is the key word on this topic given the thousands of officially licensed player cards we mint each season.
We aim to provide as much space as possible for the player’s photography as it’s obviously the key card element — but sometimes we have to make compromises for a more scalable approach.
In the future, we hope to test special edition cards with different photography. This is a complicated project to scale, but, overall, would you be excited to see special edition cards featuring alternate player photography? If so, what are you imagining? Let us know via Sorare Discord and X (formerly Twitter). We might have something in store for this season!
Addressing design feedback
Among your feedback of our initial 23–24 card designs, a number of community members flagged “available space” at the bottom of the cards. The reason for that empty space is due to work we’re doing on special edition cards. To create unique special edition cards — and make them pop on your gallery — we’ll be using all that current empty space.
Another key piece of feedback involved player position font (lack of readability). We heard you and have reverted that to the same font used with player names. The serif font was an attempt to make those cards look more premium, more elegant. But, as you correctly pointed out, design should not take priority over usage, so we listened and quickly pivoted.
Next steps
This new step in our card design evolution into 3D invites progression. With an added depth with the frame, via textures and shapes, we have the ingredients to evolve Sorare digital player cards and create new and exciting designs for years to come.
Many thanks for your time and feedback. We hope you’re as excited as we are about the new card designs!
