Sunday, June 7, 2020

1992 Fleer Baseball: Expanded Redesign

Back in March, I tried a redesign of the 1992 Fleer baseball set. It was mainly to see how the cards would look with a border color other than the green that Fleer went with.  

I settled on two color options, navy blue and charcoal, and then selected a few cards to experiment with for each color. Well, I enjoyed the outcome (not to mention the reader response) so much that I wanted to experiment a little more. That's where this expanded redesign comes in. 

With charcoal looking especially sharp—and probably being a better, more neutral fit across the board—I decided to try that color on one card from each baseball team. Results are below, running alphabetically by city.

For the sake of comparison, let's start by showing the original 1992 design. Here we have cards from the first three teams: Atlanta, Baltimore, and Boston.




And the redesign:




Let's go through the rest of the teams.


















With 26 teams total, I needed to fill that last slot. So I found one of the art cards that appear at the back of the set and gave it the charcoal treatment as well. It's rad enough that Ken Griffey Jr. is in outer space, deposited on an unknown planet by a diffraction of light through some sort of prism or interstellar travel device. But change the green border to a charcoal gray and it's even more rad. (Were kids still saying "rad" in 1992?)

Overall, I tried to match the color of the player names to the team colors a little more than Fleer did with the original design, while also making sure to keep the names bright against the dark gray.

As for the photography, I hope you'll agree that there are some excellent examples in this set. With the charcoal borders, I think the images really stand out more than they do against the original green, and I tried to choose a card from each team that exemplifies the point.

I have to admit something, though. After seeing each team laid out like this in the charcoal border, I started to think, Wait a minute. This looks like 1986 Topps, but using the player names instead of the team names and then rotating the text 90 degrees.

I wonder if the designers at Fleer considered using a similar color for the borders, but then thought the same thing. After all, 1986 was only a few years in the rear-view mirror at that point.

Regardless, I still really like the way these cards turned out. Hope you do, too.

Thanks for reading, as always.

18 comments:

  1. Definitely an improvement. I really like how the light blue and bright red pop off of the card.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Fuji! I wonder how closely that would carry over to a printed version. Regardless, I think they'd have looked cool coming out of a pack.

      Delete
  2. When will boxes be ready for order? I'd like a couple, providing collation is improved as well. I've always had a love/hate relationship with this release; wanting to shake someone silly til they said why they went with green. Your Griffey is amazing! We all know it's dark in space, not green. How come it is you're not working for a card company?? Someone will steal your ideas. Or someone here will reach out to them so they can steal your ideas... Who would do such a thing anyway...and why would I think of it??

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Julie, I don't know which I enjoy more -- the posts you make over at your blog, or the comments you leave here. Heheh.

      Seems like Upper Deck owns the Fleer name now, so maybe we'll collaborate one day. Or maybe they'll just cite copyright infringement and take my design ideas, like you said. (Hopefully they're more friendly than that.) Exciting story either way, I guess. . .

      Delete
  3. Yeah, that looks really nice. Makes me miss the days of borders with different color border parallels.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Brett! Might have been fun to open a pack of these back in 1992 and find a charcoal-bordered card among all the green ones.

      Delete
  4. Wow these are really nice. Fleer needed you back in 92.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Nice compliment Jeff, thank you! It would be fun to watch a documentary about this set, where some of Fleer's production and design staff were interviewed about the green borders.

      Delete
  5. I wouldn't have thought about it until you pointed it out, but now I do see the 1986 Topps similarity. But I don't think its too similar, the team logo on the 1992 Fleer really sets it apart from the 86s.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The team logo does help differentiate the design a little bit, doesn't it? Good thinking, Sean.

      Delete
  6. '92 Fleer is one of my least favorite sets of all-time, so those border changes are definitely a huge upgrade!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Nick! I wonder if this set will ever take on a cult following similar to really bad hockey jerseys, like the mustard yellow Vancouver "V" jerseys from the early '80s, or the "fish sticks" jerseys the Islanders wore for a couple of years in the mid-90s.

      Delete
  7. These look really good, I think you already know this by now, but just thought that I'd add my one cent too. I don't recall collecting this set as a kid, but I don't think that it had anything to do with the green borders though, as I didn't dislike them back then, and still don't mind them even now.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Jon! The originals have definitely grown on me since I started the project. When you have a full page of them in a binder they don't look bad at all, especially because they're organized by team.

      Delete
  8. This is amazing. You've really put lipstick on the pig here...and I love it! The HoJo and Rickey are killer cards. Great work. I would definitely purchase this product.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Heh. I've always enjoyed that expression. Thanks very much for the compliment! Going to check out your blog now.

      Delete
  9. I didn't think this set could ever look good to me but you changed that for me. Great stuff.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks very much, Bulldog! Glad these cards are still finding people out there in the blogosphere a few weeks after I posted them. Going to check out your blog now, too.

      Delete