At work today, a fellow collector I work with asked what I would change about card design if I had the opportunity. I literally talked for about 45 minutes straight, it was kind of sad. The funniest part of the whole thing was that all the guy said after I was done was, “well you would have to pretty stupid to do any of those things.” Yeah, no shit, right? How dumb do you actually have to be in order to not only make these mistakes once, but multiple times in the same goddamn year? I am continually shocked by the number of things that go wrong, I stop looking for the things that go right.

Incomplete Cards

I talk endlessly on this site about the ever infamous floating swatch card. You know what Im talking about right? The card that looks like someone forgot to put the sticker on the empty spot it usually goes. In all reality, Panini is the only company that hasnt figured out this incredibly fucking simple solution, and that angers me to no end. First off, Panini is still producing single jersey cards to fill out mid to high end products, which is something that Topps and Upper Deck gave up on a while ago. Because they still think that collectors desire non-autographed jersey cards with no redeeming value instead of added creativity, they literally churn them out like cookies at nabisco. Normal card design principles would dictate a change in card layout with the change from Jersey to auto or auto jersey, but Panini hasnt gotten the memo. Must not have had a cover sheet. Panini boils my blood because each of their products does this with increasing frequency, and the solution is in the way the cards are produced. What needs to be done is simple, very simple. START FILLING OUT SETS IN NEW WAYS! Instead of trying to parallel the hell out of every fucking card, design each card for ONE parallel.

Here is the current set structure for Panini:

Base
Base parallel 1
Base parallel 2
Base parallel 3
Base parallel 4
Base 1/1
Base jersey
Base auto
Base auto jersey
Base auto patch
Insert
Insert parallel 1-4
Insert jersey
insert auto
insert auto jersey
insert auto patch
repeat for insert sets 2-5

It should look like this:

Base
Base parallel 1
Base parallel 1/1
Base auto
Insert auto/jersey
Insert 2 auto patch
Insert 3 auto jersey
Insert 4 auto patch
Insert 5 auto jersey
Insert 6 auto
Insert 7 auto
Insert 8 auto patch
Insert sets 9-11 jersey only

See how that works? Much more content and no cards that have to be adjusted for each parallel. Yes, it means more design work and much more theme work, but every card will look like it is meant to fit the design. Panini starts every card with the auto/jersey parallel and removes elements of the cards until they get to the base, which means that you get a lot of cards that look absolutely ridiculous. Upper Deck employed the correct way of doing things for just about every product, and even Topps has done a good job of not resorting to Panini-nizing their products. Wonder why every Panini set is interchangeable? Its because they suck at laying things out.

Vertically Oriented Auto Jersey Cards

Lets face it, to produce a card with room for a signature AND a swatch, you need a lot of room. When you do vertical auto jersey cards, its almost inevitable that the player is going to get covered up by the swatch. Topps sucks so bad at this that the entire Bowman Sterling set is a complete fail, and this is pretty much the case for aspects of Finest and Chrome too. Considering that horizontal cards give more room or what needs to be on a card, this should be the way things are done. Look at the way Exquisite and SPA are done, and what is included on each card, you can see that there is room for a JUMBO swatch, auto AND player pic.

Foil Cards

Its one thing to use gold or silver stamping on borders or certain elements of the cards, but for the entire front of the card to be foil, it cheapens the overall look. It basically screams that the company is trying to hide a horrible card design, and rather than doing it right, they just use the foil to disguise their mistakes. I always say that if you want to use foil for Disney Princess or Justin Bieber cards, thats fine, but for sports cards, you need flat stock. Regular stock makes player pictures pop out of the background, and it never dulls the color or presentation of the final product. National Treasures, Five Star, SPA, Ultimate and Exquisite have rarely ever used a completely foil card, and its because flat stock looks more classy and expensive. Panini puts more cards on foil stock than any company, and I get nothing but a feeling that they are amateurs over at the HQ.

Cards with Tiny Player Pictures

This goes back to vertically oriented auto/jersey cards, but Topps has done Triple Threads for many years without ever using a normal sized player picture. We collect cards for the players themselves, not for the shit you can spell out in die cut windows. There is never any base cards with tiny player pictures because companies realize that the player should normally be the focus of the card. If that is the case, why do the rules not apply across the board? Player pictures need to be a major part of any card’s composition, if not only because many design elements are hard to do well. Why would you ever choose a photoshop created background instead of the player rumbling downfield on a sweet play? The solution is extensive use of full game shots, or at least incorporating game oriented backgrounds into the majority of the cards.

Players in Odd Photos

In baseball, a player’s brand is his face AND his uniform, but in Football, its just the uniform. That means the glamor shot style portrait wont work, because so many of the players are 100% anonymous in their street clothes or without the helmet. Also, football is a violent game, where the armor they wear is designed to be used as an image. Panini fucked up at epic levels with many of their freshman fabric cards from 2010 Certified because they opted to use rookie photo portraits instead of action shots. They made one of the worst insert cards in history with the Initial Steps set, mainly because they combined a TERRIBLE theme with these types of shots,leading to a laughable final product. Topps has been known to do this too, and even Upper Deck screwed it up over the course of their license. Basically, there are times when you can push the envelope, but do it with the type of shot you use, rather than creating fake presences off the field.

Subsets with Lame Names and Concepts

I get that boredom will eventually set in if you dont change things up, but there needs to be someone who gets that humor and wit have no place in this hobby. I want cool, not funny, so enough with the plays on words. This includes stuff like the Limited Initial Steps cards, with rookie players sitting on actual steps, but it also means the companies have to be conscious to choose awesome themes for their products. Panini did more than one set with an orientation concept in the SAME year, which sucks more because the idea itself sucks ass.

Overdone 1/1s

This is basically a Topps-centric failure, especially when you see a set like Triple Threads with over 2000 1/1 cards in one product. The 1/1 should be a card that could never be replicated, not just another card to add to the set. I understand that 1/1s are a necessary part of every set, but they need to be used sparingly enough to prevent problems in value distribution on the secondary market.

Printing Plates in Mid to High End Sets

Adding printing plates in low end products as an added value is one thing, but to cloud the higher end stuff with these UGLY cards is beyond blasphemy. There have been a lot of accusations saying that the printing plates are never even used in card production, but that doesnt even matter when you see how ugly they are. If a company uses a printing plate, they need to have a card border to add some element of the printed final product, even going so far as doing a die cut normal card to reveal the plate beneath. They do not belong in any set above 75 dollars per box, and it goes double for products like some of the Panini and Topps sets that use them everywhere.

Multi Signed Cards With High Dollar Players and High Round Rookies

This is a practice that I never understood, and its a main reason why duals and triples end up as 90 yard TD passes or sacks for a 20 yard loss with no in between. Card companies need to do more with the rookies who are GUARANTEED to carry value and a lot less paring veteran dollar kings with fifth round wide receivers. It even goes so far as pairing late round rookies with top draft picks who are much more likely to succeed. Nothing pisses me off more than seeing Sam Bradford paired with Mardy Gilyard simply because they play for the same team.

I get that it seems like there is a lot I dont like, but so many of these things should never have been brought into my state of being in the first place. Its gotten to a point of parody, so much that I can show these horrible examples to people outside of the hobby and they laugh. Also, its obvious when the manufacturers put extreme effort into a set (See 2010 Topps Five Star), and its just as obvious when they dont (See 2010 Absolute Memorabilia). When your brand loyalty is constantly under fire, much like it is in the football industry, why not shoot for the stars at every turn? If you cannot bring your “A” game with each product due to time or money, then its time to re-evaluate strategy. Bottom line.