Without a doubt, one of my favorite days of the year is today … Opening Day of the regular season for YOUR San Francisco Giants. Not too many people know this, but one of the reasons I got into journalism was because I wanted to cover the Giants as a professional when I grew up. Thankfully, I’m not grown up entirely and still get to cover MY team on a daily basis. OK. Last year, I did a pretty studly job on the 2011 preview for the Giants. This year, with less space, I think I did a pretty bang-up job.
Actually, I had LOTS of help this time around. Here’s the cover of the 2012 Giants Preview in Friday’s Daily Journal. Click for a larger view.
The idea was conceived a couple of weeks ago when I came across some artwork done by my good friend and BFAM McWendell Roth. He’s in the thick of a 365 project where he’s drawing something every day. I came across this cartoonish-style self portrait and fell in love with the idea of possibly putting something together for the Giants. McWendell agreed and came up with five different sketches of specific pitchers I thought would work for our idea. As of a Sunday though, there were doubts as to whether I’d have the time to pull this off. Nathan Mollat, sports editor, is on a mini-vacay, and as such, I’m in charge of the SPORTS section which doesn’t give me much time to build something like this.
But after seeing McWendell’s picture of Tim Lincecum, I knew there was no way I couldn’t at least try to work something out. After chatting with him a bit, we went five deep on the sketches. He sent me what I’m showing you here.
My initial intent was to take the sketches into Illustrator and trace them out. But I liked the background, that texture of a sketch pad, and thus, I decided to keep it. Once I expanded that, I went to work cutting out the five different portraits and placing them where and how I wanted. The font, it’s YouAreLoved, which McWendell introduced me to before this on a homework assignment he was working on.
After getting most of the cover done, I knew we had to build something for the inside page. Again, most of these are built blind, because we don’t exactly know the amount of space we’ll have available in the newspaper until the day of (or the night before). When I started building the inside page you see below, I had an idea of what I could ask for and what I would get in terms of editorial space. I was right. Click below for a larger view.
I think I pulled this part off very well, considering the space. I had McWendell sketch up a template for the jerseys you see on the left. And from there, I just went plugging away on details I thought would look cool. As it turns out, I was right. I have to say, I’m usually very hard on myself. But I actually liked how this particular project turned out.
We’ve gotten some pub for it already. I sent the pdfs over to the team at Sportdesigner.com. They were nice enough to put us in their Facebook slideshow.
I’m going to finish this post by once again extending my gratitude and appreciation for McWendell. He’s one of my longest tenured friends. We go all the way back to elementary school at George Washington in Daly City. Like McWendell, I have a lot of friends who, through their talents, make me look smarter and better than I actually am. It was an honor to work with such creative energy. Thank you for your help, Mac. You made me look like a genius.
Oh My July! 