O.K boys and girls. I’m going to try and get us through this very long blog post as effortlessly as possible. But, there is a lot, so bear with me. Yes yes yes, the San Francisco 49ers are in the 2012-2013 Super Bowl where they’ll be playing the Baltimore Ravens. You already knew that. So, first thing’s first, the San Mateo Daily Journal cover page commemorating the game.
The cover runs as part of a 4-page pull-out section we put together at the Daily Journal. It’s something I’ve been planning since the Atlanta NFC title game. As soon as the Niners locked up that game, I went to work on conceptualizing a plan for the Daily Journal. I guess as a designer, you shoot big hoping that enough people love your idea and that it sticks. My publisher emailed the sports team saying, “let’s talk pull-out section” and here’s what I presented everyone not too long after that email. First, the 8-page section plan.
And the 4-page idea
For a newspaper the size of the Daily Journal, an 8-page plan with a full double-truck treatment is pretty ambitious. We don’t necessarily have the time or the resources to pull this off. But heck, the last time the 49ERS where in THE SUPER BOWL, the Daily Journal wasn’t in existence. So attempt No. 1 should be BIG.
Well, the idea stuck … with me, but not necessarily our advertisers and sales team. Listen, I don’t know enough about sales for me to talk, but I waited a week to really start plugging away to see if we’re going eight pages or four, and when there wasn’t as much I prepared for four and maybe even the idea of not building anything at all. Come Monday, I had no choice but to start planning and getting things together for the four pages. Bummer, yes. I had the idea of representing the Lombardi trophy that wasn’t quite San Francisco’s — and with a long history of success, getting back to the Super Bowl was like “filling a void” for the organization. I liked it, I stuck with it and dug up around for some Lombardi trophies. They’re to your left up there. After some tinkering with levels, curves, all that jazz, I was left with something like …
Boom, there’s your cover image. The “empty” Lombardi trophy image was born from a pen tool path, which, perfectly enough, was already done for me with the trophy image I used. Don’t ask me how. That looked a little something like this …
As you’ll notice, the original frame didn’t include the circumference-like dotted lines on top of the trophy AND the five Lombardis were staggered a lot differently. The concept and message was there though. I liked the added dimension given by those extra lines, so I kept them. Then, after an impromptu meeting of the minds with Erik, our page designer, we shrunk the trophies a bit and liked them up to add more depth of field to the images. From there, it was a matter of adding the text. I knew I wanted to include a locally-angled take on the Super Bowl and commissioned my editor, Nathan, to take of that. I thought there was good spacing throughout the cover page.
Now, the page 2’s infographic was a whole different beast. I found out on Tuesday we were sticking with the 10×12 original space of my plan. And really, when trying to go from a double-truck to a single-page infographic, well, it’s a unique challenge to cram as much as you can into the one page. So, we went forward searching to images to use — vertical ones. And as is all the rage in The City right now, we landed on Colin Kaepernick.
And then the fun part becomes putting together the puzzle and turning all of this …
Into this …
And ultimately … (Click for larger views)
Wait, where’d the ads go? Oh well. The cover and the infographic were just half of the section. I, at the very last minute I may add, commissioned Sally Schilling, one of our best correspondents, to work on a locally angled, where to watch the game kind of story. She came through big time and her story was featured on Page 3 along with a sidebar of some places to watch the Super bowl locally. Page 4 was the jump page for Nathan’s story on Coach Matteucci and some other agate-type goodness. Click for larger views.
We’re not done just yet. You’ll notice we pulled off a couple of great little fillers on page 3. I liked the synopsis for the Super Bowls. That came last minute. We had to go out of order because I wanted to one for Super Bowl XXIII as a side bar for the local story since it’s mentioned in it.
There was still the little thing known as A1. As with most of these 49ers treatments in sports, I got asked for design something to the front page of the newspaper — which I did. I stayed with the stadium theme we’ve had going the last couple of weeks — starting with Candlestick, then the Georgia Dome and ultimate the Mercedes Benz Superdome.
I had to explain to my nephew today who No. 8 was. I said simply the best quarterback of all time. Steve Young. Love that guy. Anyways, there you have it, Waaaaaaayyy more than you’ve ever wanted to know about the 2012-2013 Daily Journal Super Bowl section. I’m tired. It was a lot of fun, but a ton of work. I’m just looking forward to being a nervous-wreck during the game. I don’t do predictions, especially when it comes to my teams. I just want ring No. 6.
Oh My July! 