There are certain card designs I have always wanted to see my work featured in. I when the first of these was done, and I was cheering for the Mets, not photographing them from the rest. Heck, I didn't even know what hockey was in 1984.

But, I was sitting around the other day, had Illustrator open, and decided to start tracing. This is the end results. Hardest part is finding the "old school" fonts.

More to come...

Pretty sweet stuff Chris !

Chris, that is really, really cool. I seriously think I could sell these as posters. Would be a really cool way to give a retro look that would be something to the dad who buys it -- and the kid whose picture is featured.

Chris these are some sweet looking cards. You did a great job on these.

Sent you a PM also...

This is fantastic stuff.

Thanks everyone. Working on a whole bunch more. Gotta tell you, for simple designs they really are a pain in the you know where.

I'm assuming back in the day all of these were done by some sort of pre-press overlay. Some of the shapes and strokes are a real difficult in vector.

Gives me much more respect for what designers did back in the day and I'm loving every minute of it!!!

For those who asked about these as templates, I am addressing two main issues:

1. They look very awkward as 8x10 or 16x20. Cards are typically 2.5x3.5, so enlargements would be 5x7, 10x14, 20x28 and so on. You can expand the design to the larger size in width, but like I said, looks awkward.

2. The old fonts aren't free. I have them because they came with a package I bought from Adobe. I can't legally distribute them, and haven't had time to try and find free versions. So I can sell you the template, but you'd be on your own for the font.

Thoughts on the issues

Frank Lauri wrote:
Chris these are some sweet looking cards. You did a great job on these.

Sent you a PM also...

PM answered.

Change the pure white paper to more of a faded look and these would be perfect. They're damn near perfect as-is. I love them.

Hell, you could even desaturate the whole thing when done to give it even more of a aged look. Great work.

Simply awesome!

Great work!

Chris is consistently top shelf on design work. I now know what my wife is going to give me for Christmas... Chris Templates.

nice stuff, as a kid I collected late 80s early 90s baseball cards, brings back memories...

Hot off the presses - 1986 Donruss Baseball.

matthewo wrote:
nice stuff, as a kid I collected late 80s early 90s baseball cards, brings back memories...

+1

I actually still have quite a few of the hockey ones left. Top notch work as always Chris. I'm a huge fan of your work. I find myself doing the exact same thing (tracing cards) sometimes when I'm bored - helps keep the pen tool sharp! But I've been trying it with more recent cards. I actually enjoy trying to figure out how the real designers do it. Your post brings back memories of some classic designs. Thanks for sharing.

Cheers,
Tony

This is amazingly high quality work- both the photographs and the designing... Fantastic job!

Incredible stuff! I love them all. Wish I had the talent. I would buy them as templates even without the fonts.

Applause! So you make the great retro template, have great photos, but then how are you,lucky enou that your shots fit and are framed perfectly too by all the different templates? If it were me, I would spend a.l that time making a template, and then not finding one shot that works with it. You found perfect shots that worked with each one, grat job.

Guy

gschlact wrote:
Applause! So you make the great retro template, have great photos, but then how are you,lucky enou that your shots fit and are framed perfectly too by all the different templates? If it were me, I would spend a.l that time making a template, and then not finding one shot that works with it. You found perfect shots that worked with each one, grat job.

Guy

Thank you for the kind words about my work. I have spent a lot of time o the design, making sure that they work for everything. I am also very fortunate to have a large library of images to select from because I shoot so much.

Often times at an event, I will shoot something specifically for a design later on. I shoot a bit looser than I usually do when doing this. I also find this helps my sales editorially because I am keeping in mind the position of a text or cover layout.

mdalby wrote:
Chris is consistently top shelf on design work. I now know what my wife is going to give me for Christmas... Chris Templates.

Too funny!!! I guess I'm going to have to figure out a way to offer gift certificates in the future.