Design Timeline: Upper Deck

This post is part of an ongoing feature The Great Griffey Base Card Project.

The Upper Deck timeline is special to this particular blog because it is perfectly synchronized with Griffey's career.  Both came out in 1989 to much acclaim, both had storybook 22-year runs filled with success, both had some controversy to deal with towards the end but remained beloved by fans, and both came to a quiet end in 2010.  Upper Deck also had a spokesman deal and exclusivity agreement with Griffey.

Their cards were always premium, their photography was always stellar, and their designs and ideas were always innovative.  They were the Joneses that other brands struggled to keep up with.

Here is every Upper Deck design by year:

 1989:

Arguably the most universally-recognized card design of the modern age and possibly of all time, the '89 design is built around a first base line with the player position appearing on the bag.  UD came out of the gate already on quality white card stock with a very light gloss finish; so while they still had room for improvement, they were always premium cards.  This set also had a really nice "Star Rookie" badge that was only around for the one set.

1990:

A simpler design than in the previous year, here we see the line from first to second base and the updated Upper Deck logo.  They kept the large, square photo with the name underneath in the white border, but this set lacks the flourish of the previous and following year's designs.  This is the plainest Upper Deck cards would get.

1991:

The concept of the base lines is completed with this design that features the path from second to third and third to home.  We get the team logo at home plate and we keep the player position on the bag.  This design is also among collector's favorites with it's great photography, attractive design, and impressive rookie checklist.

1992:

Upper Deck was known for its triple exposure shots that were first introduced in the '89 set.  Here we have a sweet quadruple exposure.  The shadow effect under the picture and the baseball coming from the logo keep things interesting.

1993:

The glossiest yet, the '93 set is the most popular Upper Deck set of the 90's.  This was the only UD set not to feature the eponymous logo; but its bright, clean design and excellent photography really struck a chord with collectors.  This remains an extremely popular set among collectors to this day.

1994:

This is the year UD really pushed the design envelope with this modern offering.  No border at all, lots of foil on every card, that crazy smooshed black-and-white version of the main image.  These cards must have looked crazy in 1994.  Oh, did I mention that this set has amazing photography?  Check it out sometime.  That bronze-colored foil would become a staple of Upper Deck's designs for years.

1995:

My favorite Upper Deck design of all time, '95 slanted classy.  This is the beginning of a movement towards designs that were at once modern and traditional.  Completely full-bleed for the first time, foiled-out name in a font that can be accurately described as pimp, a nice sense of balance, that hint of a dark fade towards the bottom - these cards looked great for any team and in any orientation, and again the photography was fantastic. 

1996:

I would like to have been a fly on the wall at this set's design meeting over at Upper Deck HQ.  I'm willing to bet it was a heated debate the day they decided on a big field of orange foil with the name in an elongated oval with filigree on either side.  This one always confused me - I can't tell whether I despise the design or just plain don't like it.  Regardless of which is more accurate, the '96 design never sat well with me despite the large quantity of great cards in the set.

1997:

I think they had a bunch of orange foil left over from the previous year, but they added wood grain to this one.  You've got to admit it does look a lot better.  The name here is in a split-faded, color-appropriate line gilded in silver foil and offset by a nice team logo on the left.  They also added a caption for every picture in the set this year which is unfortunately something they did only once more then never again.  I'd love to see that element make a comeback.  The UD logo in the same foil as the team logo and in the opposing corner balances the card nicely. 

At the time it came out I was not crazy about this set for it's similarity in orange foil to the 1996 design and the addition of the captions which I thought was clunky back then.  As I look at it today, I realize how awesome the design really was.  Plus, look at those old-ass CRT televisions.  I love when cards showcase old tech.

1998:

The last set that was around when I still collected, the '98 design was futuristic and cool.  Big ol' name plate along the side featuring a modern font and lots of silver detailing, a caption for every picture, a large team name, and more solid photography all made this set feel high-end and desireable. 

1999:

One of the most claustrophobic designs ever put to cardboard, this set makes kittens cry.  I just want to snip those two big wings running along the sides right off - without them this would be a halfway decent design with the curved nameplate, team color, and and cool foil baseball design.  Besides the not-horrible bottom-center section, the design here is terrible and makes miscuts super obvious.  Boo this man...

2000:

I'm normally against random boxes and lines with no purpose, but this doesn't look bad.  I think it's the slight color tint at the bottom and varying levels of shading in the boxes.  Not a lot to this design, but anything is an improvement on '99.

2001:

The last of Upper Deck's bronze age (of foil), here we have a nice elongated font alongside a team logo.  The most unique element of the design here is the use of team-appropriate color fades along the left edge and bottom.  I never noticed them until I got a good look at the card for this post, and at first I thought I was looking at glare from a bad scan.  Turns out this stupid white fade is on every base card.  Ick.

2002:

I call this the Navajo set because it's got a vaguely southwestern/Native American vibe to it.  I've got to admit it looks really good.  The lettering, the balance, the clean lines - this looks pretty good and translates well to horizontal layouts.

2003:



Meh.  Not bad, but nothing spectacular either.  That big-ass red box is a hair too high up on the card.  Frankly it would look better square in the middle of the card.

2004:

This year's base design looks more like a subset that showcases each team's ballpark.  I had this card for a long time without even realizing it was the base card.  I really like the concept of reflecting the team's home park, but here it seems like an afterthought that cheapens what is supposed to be a premium base set.

2005:

I like the name plate here, but it's so damn big.  Why did they make it so big?  Cut that in half and you'd have a good-looking card. 

2006:

Finally - a good one.  I love this design, and it's not just because of the amazing picture on Griffey's card.  This is a return to what makes Upper Deck great to me: simple design + great photography = quality baseball card.  You don't have to go crazy and fill the layout with design for the sake of design.  You can just slap the team logo in a little black box and stick the guy's name on there.  The smaller foil name looks great, too.  As long as the photo quality is there, not cluttering the card up with stuff should be the goal.

2007:

If this design was described to me I would assume it's another case of card claustrophobia, but the final product is a good-looking card.  The light colors keep the side bars from dominating the design, and they frame yet another year of solid photography quite well.  The centering of the name is also a big hit with me.  This looks even better in a horizontal layout as the bars then become the top and bottom of the card for a widescreen effect.

2008:

Look! a new Upper Deck logo.  This is almost the exact same design as the 1995 base set, so I love it.  If I'd never collected cards in my life and I had to pick a favorite set today, it would probably be this one (though my long history of love for the '95 set keeps me from changing my mind even now).  The perfect font and spacing, the position in the home plate with the team name below, the snazzy new foil logo - we have a real contender on our hands for best Upper Deck design.

2009:

Nothing complicated here: everything gets its own box.  A clean, modern layout accented in silver.  Looks great.

2010:

This design reminds me a lot of '96 Topps with the little slanted monochromatic portrait next to the name but accented in green instead of blue.  It was easy to get a sense of Upper Deck's impending doom just by thumbing through these cards.  The fun and unique photography was gone, replaced by standard action shots and even a few honest-to-goodness studio-base Glamour shots.  The design isn't bad, but I don't think anybody expected it would end this way much in the same way that nobody expected Griffey would call it quits just a few weeks into the season in 2010. 

This was an unspectacular ending to an otherwise spectacular 22-year run.
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I'll admit that in my collecting days I was a much bigger fan of Upper Deck than Topps.  They always seemed to have their shit together more than any other brand.  Topps was the kid stuff and Upper Deck was the serious adult collector stuff.  Donruss and Leaf and Pinnacle and the Fleer brands all hung out in the middle of the spectrum, but Upper Deck were the cards you really wanted.  I'm sad to see them out of the market.  I wonder what they would be making today.

If they do ever make it back to baseball, a retrospective set would be a must.  Here's hoping....

Here is every Upper Deck base card design ever made:

Ken Griffey, Jr.: the Joey Chestnutt of Baseball

Joey Chestnutt broke his own record today when he ate 69 hot dogs in ten minutes at the Nathan's International Hot Dog Eating Contest.  As I watched Joey pull away from fellow contenders Eater X and Matt Stonie, I couldn't help contemplating what it is that makes a champion.  The first definition in the dictionary says that a champion is an "American dancer who choreographed and directed many musicals, including Hello Dolly!"  They took the words right out of my mouth.

Here's a bunch of patriotic Griffeys to celebrate the fourth of July by looking at:

Back in 1997 while common folks like you and me were blowing up bottle rockets and roman candles, Junior was blowing up the AL West, setting a career high 56 HR and 147 RBI.

This card superimposes Junior against the ol' Stars and Bars.  Just like Rocky.

Also like Rocky, Griffey is from the state of Pennsylvania which is located in America.

When Griffey accepted his Home Run Derby trophy in '99 he wore his "American" jersey to remind everyone of his fierce patriotism.  The guy behind him was super jeals of said jersey.  He was sporting a Ralph Lauren polo which, while it had the right colors, lacked tenacity.

 

Have you ever seen Geroge C. Scott's opening speech in Patton?  This is the cardboard version of that.

He even ran for president according to Nike's marketing department.  Sadly his platform of lower taxes for professional athletes and longer term limits for AL MVPs didn't click with the voting public.

I'd like to sit here and keep taking stabs at levity, but I have a brown paper bag of chasers, streakers, black cats, and jumping jacks (plus some sparklers for the wife and some snakes for me) at my feet.  Here are a bunch more Griffeys that feature the red, white, and blue with prominence.  Enjoy!

 
'Merica, baby.

Design Timeline: Pinnacle

This post is part of an ongoing feature The Great Griffey Base Card Project.

Score's premium offering only lasted eight years, but I remember really liking the brand for the most part.  Neat inserts and one of the coolest parallels in the market, Pinnacle was always a fun break.  I ended up buying a lot of packs in my day.

Pinnacle and I share a similar timeline, too: that is, it was only around the the years I collected.  Pinnacle began in 1992 when I was just starting to realize baseball cards exist.  The brand peaked when my own interest in the hobby was at its strongest, then it half-heartedly hobbled along for a couple years before fizzling out completely.  Our bell curves are comparable.

Here is every design by year of Pinnacle:

1992:

In its intro year it seemed Pinnacle had everything going for it: a cool name, a great design, and instant success in the market.  If you had to guess how well a brand would do by their first set, most collectors would say that Pinnacle was going to be a major player.  They were the first major-brand black-bordered cards since '71 Topps, but these were less prone to damage due to better card stock.  Apart from that the design is modern and eye-grabbing.  The black makes what colors are there pop as does the overlap of the player's silhouette over the black inner border.  A universally-appreciated set in general.

1993:

A lot of people love this set, too.  I'm not crazy about it.  I find it generic and plain, especially compared with other Pinnacle sets.  The gold foil brand logo is neat, I guess, and I do like how the picture (which is awesome) is completely unencumbered by logos and text.  Other than that, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....

1994:

This was their first full-bleed issue, and it is another collector favorite.  The unique name plate in gold foil, the gloss, the great photography - it all came together to make the '94 set a hit to this day.  This is also the year Pinnacle incorporated the Dufex printing process into their Museum Collection parallel for the first time - and it looked good.

1995:

I know a lot of folks are going to disagree with me here, but I think this is the greatest Pinnacle set of all time.  Lots of creatively-used gold foil, a ton of excellent photography (check out the Ozzie Smith base card sometime), the last-name-only style of name plate.  I dig it all.  Plus I love it when foil is textured to make designs and pictures as was done in the team logo here.  And did I mention that the picture on this card is also my Blogger avatar?

1996:

Check out this heroic Glamour shot.  This set took the whole foil-texturing thing to a new level, depicting a batter slamming a ball so hard it creates big lines of force emanating from the point of impact.  Kaboosh!  Triangle of power, Zelda-style.  There are also some horizontally-oriented cards in this set that keep the gold triangle hypotenuse on the short-side but show the name vertically.  They look awkward.  Despite those, the set is solid.

1997:

In 1997 the base set design kept the gold triangles but added the element of a field of small letters that spelled out words related to the player's team.  Mariners players had words like "Kingdome," "Seattle," and even "Junior" buried in their word fields.  Regardless of how neat this sounds, the design comes across as clunky and kind of U-G-L-Y it ain't got no alibi, it's ugly.  Yeah, yeah, it's ugly.

Of course you don't see that here because Pinnacle did not make a regular base card for a number of players who had been slated for Series 2.  Then Pinnacle put the kibosh on Series 2 and instead released a spinoff set which Baseballcardpedia calls "New Pinnacle."  Hence this Clout subset card is the only regular Pinnacle base card Griffey would get this year, not counting the spinoff set (I don't count the spinoff set).  Its design is OK for a subset, and a damn masterpiece when compared to that of the base set. 

1998:

This year Griffey got two subsets and no base cards in the 200-card set.  The closest to a base card I have to show you is his Field of Vision card because, with the exception of Derek Jeter, every player who got a Field of Vision card was omitted from the base set.  That list includes the likes of Frank Thomas, Roger Clemens and Cal Ripken.  I can't seem to find any reason for why they did it that way.  It's a great looking card and everything, but why?  For the second year in a row, there's not a single regular Pinnacle base card with Griffey's previous year stats. 

For the record, I really liked the base design of '98 Pinnacle.  Full-bleed, small name vertical along the right edge in holofoil, nice printing and photography - It was a great set.  I wish there had been a Griffey in it.

Thus Pinnacle's short but prolific run came to an end with this set.

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1998 was the last year of any Score, Select, and Pinnacle product which included all the brands' flagship sets and six spinoffs.  These guys made a lot of cool cards in the 90's - I'd like to see someone make an Archives-style set that covers all the designs from this family of brands.  I'd buy tons of that stuff.

Here's all seven base designs from every year of Pinnacle.