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Uni Watch

Info(graphic) Please…

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infografix hed

By Phil Hecken

I was going to just put up an “Open Thread” for today, being the comments are likely to be light. But what the hey, I had this one put together, so here we go:

Back on Monday, Paul announced the winner of his first “Infographic” contest. He described it thusly:

And speaking of contests”¦: Back in February I promised a T-shirt or a free membership to the reader who devised and submitted the best sports-related infographic. My bad for not following up on that until now, but I’m happy to announce our winner: Mark Peterson, who came up with a series of charts tracking the postseason appearances by MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL teams.

One reason I chose Mark as the winner is that his charts didn’t need any explanation — he provided a key or legend for each one right there on each chart. Almost all the other submissions, as elegant and clever as some of them were, required explanations (sometimes rather lengthy ones) from their respective designers. My feeling is that an infographic is much more effective if it can be understood on its own terms, without an separate instruction manual.

There was a bit more explanation of the Infographics Paul liked in the main article, but then buried deep in the comments, rob h wrote: “I love the infographics ”” anyway you could put up a gallery or a page with links to the non-winning submissions (like the Baseball Project logos) ”” or just link to them here in the comments?” to which Paul replied, “The problem, as I sort of hinted at in the text, is that the other submissions don’t mean anything unless you can read their accompanying explanations, which means I’d have to code up a full entry, blah-blah-blah I’m too lazy the end.”

Not wanting to have those reader submissions go left unseen, I decided I’d help the boss out by coding up a full entry, replete with their accompanying explanations — and those follow below. I love Infographics, and as UW readers have shown, they do too. They’re also quite good at creating them. Dig:

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Mickel Yantz has this nice Mariner Infograph:

Greetings,
I did a graph for the Seattle Mariners season records using thier away and alternative jersey colors as well as their sleeve stripes and fonts. After completing it I realized this might have been more impressive if they would ever win something, lol. Thanks for Uni Watch, it’s my morning read.

Mickel Yantz
Seahawks Uniform History

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Chris Giorgio came up with an all-sport Uni Graph:

Here is the uniform infographic I designed. It depicts the home/road/alts for each of the teams. In each square, the top is the home, the bottom is the road and the left is the alternate (for home and road) depending on how many different jerseys they wear. There is also a bar at the top to depict the cap/helmet color when applicable. It should be easy to figure out based on which teams (or sports) generally wear white at home and color on the road and vice versa. The sports are shown in the same order from left to right when available: MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL. I left out throwbacks and tried to include upcoming changes like the Broncos’ orange crush jerseys and the Bills’ new white helmets. Hope you like. If you have any suggestions or tweaks feel free to critique.

Chris Giorgio
Illustration & Design
www.chrisgiorgio.com

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Ross Bergman created a cool infographic that’s best left to him to describe:

Hey, I really like the infographic stuff on the site right now. I made one based on the 2007 Phillies season in a digital art class when I was in college, but it could be applied to any sport and season. Each game in the season is represented by a cell whose color is defined by the uniform colors of the two teams. The two colors are mixed proportionally to the runs scored in the game and the cell’s length is defined by the total runs. I used red for the Phillies, and if the opponent was primarily red, i used their secondary color. The season is split in half, and the idea works well because you can see the Phillies improving as the season goes on.

In the attached picture, there is a key of the opposing teams’ colors in the sequence they played. I’ve done a few others based on football, but I like baseball because of the large number of games. I’m going to do a bunch more based on significant seasons, and I think there are other ways to work with the format.

Take care, and thanks for all the awesome stuff on the site. It’s the equivalent of my morning paper.

-Ross

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Coachie Ballgames came up with a nifty time/space graphic for the UCLA hoops team:

So as your blog today mentioned, UCLA played its last game at Pauley Pavillion before a massive renovation. They haven’t finalized their plans for next season, but it sounds like the men’s basketball team will be playing their home games all over southern California. I made a fun little map showing their potential arenas for next season which you may dig.

Regards,
Coachie Ballgames

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And the final infograph comes from Steve Shanabruch, with a cool “Cubs By Numbers”:

I remember last month you were asking people to submit infographics for a chance to win a Uni Watch membership or a t-shirt. Well, I don’t remember seeing any submissions, so boredom this weekend lead me to coming up with one: Chicago Cubs by the Numbers.

I found a site that listed who wore what number throughout the history of the Cubs, so I came up with a way to visually display this. The size of the number is directly related to the number of players that wore each number. So a break down of the graphic:

– The larger the number, the more players that wore it, obviously.
– The most-worn numbers in Cubs history are 15 and 19, and these are displayed in red (48 players/coaches each).
– On second thought, the most-worn number is actually 42, but this is only because all Cubs players have worn 42 on Jackie Robinson day for the last few seasons.
– Retired numbers are denoted by using a circle with pinstripes.
– The least-worn numbers (of the numbers worn) are 72, 76, 81, 94 and 96, all worn by one player/coach. They are displayed on the image (as well as 99, worn by two members of the Cubs), but they are just dots that easily are lost if you’re not looking for them.

So that’s about it.
Thanks!
Steve

So that’s it for this round of Infographics — Paul will be continuing this contest. In fact, he said: “I’m happy to do another one of these contests (and promise not to wait a month and a half to announce the winner this time). So if you want to submit more infographics, let’s have ’em.” Keep ’em coming folks — and if Paul isn’t able to code ’em all up, I will.

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Benchies Header

Benchies

by Rick Pearson

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Mike’s mind is, to say the least, interesting. And remember, today is the day you CAN put them all in one basket.

s-Easter color wide

And your full size version, as always.

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all sport uni tweaks

Uni Tweaks

We have another nice of tweaks today.

If you have a tweak, change or concept for any sport, send them my way.

Remember, if possible, try to keep your descriptions to ~50 words (give or take) per tweak. You guys have been great a keeping to that, and it’s much appreciated!

And so, lets begin:

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Up first is Paul Lee, who typically stays under the “50” word max by…about 49:

Lakers

Paul Lee

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Next up is Alex “Insert Nickname Here” Poterack, with a nice update for the Crew:

This tweak is really just a combination of two basic ideas: 1, bring back the ball and glove logo in the current colors; and 2, get rid of the drop shadow on the wordmark. My limited photoshop skills worked well enough getting rid of the drop shadow on a big version of the logo, but shrinking it down to uni size made it look messy, so try to imagine the big version when looking at the full uni I sent over.

Alex

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And closing down the tweak show today is Colin Wilcox, with a Rays tweak:

Many people believe that the Rays previous look was their best, and I happen to agree with that. What I did was add their current colors to the previous design.

The 2 TB logos attached would be the logos featured on their hats.

Thanks,

Colin Wilcox

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Great job today, tweakers. Back next month with more.

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Everyone have a great Sunday — for all who celebrate, Happy Easter.

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Black is a Mets color now, and the Mets are a black team. Maybe they shouldn’t be, but they are, and that’s just a fact. — R. Scott Rogers

 
  
 
Comments (42)

    I don’t know , if “the Jeff” wants the honour of throwing out the uni watch equivalent of the opening pitch, he has to come up with something better than:Happy Chocolate Egg Day everyone!”

    Could anything more say that he found nothing of interest to comment on – that we’re heading to a less than 20 comments by noon day.

    How about this, why does Easter wallow behind the other holidays for Sports tie in’s. Thanksgiving seems to lead the way, New Years does great, and Christmas has those NBA games. Even lesser holidays like St Patty’s day has sports tie in’s, but Easter seems like the Cotton Bowl of holidays, great tradition, but has not kept up with the other holidays in terms of sports tie-ins. Maybe it’s the floating dates, maybe it’s the ugly Easter colours – but do any teams wear Easter patches today?

    Something to that, sorta. The Resurrection is the lynchpin of Christianity. It is at once grim and joyous, a time of pondering and reflection about what you do, or do not, believe.

    Plus, the date does float. Many years it falls even before the start of the MLB season.

    And, while Christmas undoubtedly has far more religious significance than the now essentially secular Thanksgiving or New Year’s or St. Pat’s, Christmas has reached the point where we it’s also an orgy of consumerism just to celebrate, well, the fact that we celebrate it. A little like all those people around who are famous just for being famous.

    A lot more to it than that, but those would seem to be some overview answers.

    With that, I will dig out my yellow 45 rpm RCA Victor record with the blue label, and listen to Roy Rogers sing the timeless holiday classic, “Egbert the Easter Egg” (which actually did get a ton of airplay in the early 50’s, btw)

    Plus, it’s the only Holiday that typically doesn’t have a day off work attached (St. Pat’s has a sort of “skip day” element in it). We aren’t reminded it’s coming by of a pending day off, that is.

    If I’m not mistaken, it’s a four day holiday weekend in the UK. (Good Friday I think is, I know Easter Monday is a holiday there.

    Kasey was being too humble by not including a link, but I will. He’s got great information about the Cubs uniform numbers, plus Cubs pocket schedules, Cubs scorecards, and other cool things. You should check it out.

    Great Benchies today, too. Makes me think of a bumper sticker somebody needs to make: “Keep the East in Easter.”

    Need Chilvers… Must have my Chilvers… It’s getting very very hot in here… Oh, dear… Anyone here see Chilvers?… Maybe a drink of something…

    Don’t worry – I am here and working on a piece for next week :)

    Happy Easter, guys (and gals too!)

    I really like Chris’ Infographic, but I am confused about the first team for Baltimore. The Ravens I get – purple and black. But shouldn’t the first box be orange and black for the Orioles, instead of silver and black?

    The Boston Bruins seem to be missing their yellow as well. It’s a sweet chart, but understandably, given how many teams are involved, some bits aren’t quite right.

    From what I found, Bruins got rid of their yellow alt and the boxes are base uni color not team colors therefore Orioles wear grey road and black alt on the road…regardless there are probably some omissions.

    why were the grizzlies’ uniform numbers solid navy last night? don’t they normally have the light blue line in them?

    CUBS SET MEDIOCRITY MARK

    the Cubs have now hit the .500 mark at every number from 1-1 to 10-10; that is a new major league record, surpassing the 1951 Red Sox and 1970 Yankees, who got to 9-9.

    “CUBS SET MEDIOCRITY MARK”

    Well, at least we can now put a number on it.
    (Hey, don’t holler on me; I grew up lovin’ the Cubs).

    So would it be awesome or terrible if they somehow managed to do that for the entire season?

    “Mediocrity” would be doing the thing but falling short of setting a record. When you do the thing to a sufficient extreme to establish a new all-time record, you transcend mediocrity and achieve excellence.

    Excellence in losing: That’s pretty much the Cubbies in a nutshell. Oh, how I miss living in Wrigleyville!

    Oh, right… thanks for graciously letting me use your template. (otherwise I’d have had to make my own, and that would have been annoying) ^_^

    /and just wait till next weekend, I think I went a little bit more extreme on the NL

    RE: UCLA Home Games.

    They will likely play their games not even close to USC (Sports Arena), but Anaheim (Honda Center) looks like the early leader.

    I’m watching the Cubs and Dodgers right now, does anyone know why the Cubs logo is Registered Trademarked on the jerseys, but the logo on Jim Riggleman’s jacket isn’t?

    link

    Really like that one. It really shows just how ridiculous it is that every team uses white. Can’t just one team give it up. I can’t stand the team the Lakers, but I like when they wear the gold instead of white. Their whites are terribly boring. For all the griping about BFBS, I am sick of WFWS.

    White is not WFWS.
    Not originally, anyway.
    And still not today.

    Sure, there are a number of light colors that could supply proper contrast. But if a team doesn’t have one of golds or powder blue (or something) as a team color, what are they supposed to do, add it arbitrarily the way teams have done with black?

    Most times white, or a light color, is required by rule. So it isn’t WFWS.

    It may not have been WFWS originally, but it is rather archaic and unnecessary now. It’s been shown multiple times that color vs color works just fine. The rules requiring lighter colored jerseys don’t need to exist. Most teams color schemes are basically X, Y & League Mandated White, where X & Y are contrasting colors. Navy/Red, Black/Gold, Green/Yellow, Blue/Silver, etc. Chances are that if a team’s primary color doesn’t contrast with the opponent, it’s secondary color will.

    true — some color vs. color would look good (red vs. gold, for example)

    but then there are some headscratchers the NBA has allowed (melo’s first game)

    I don’t know that wanting maximum visual difference between the teams, for the sake of the players and fans, is particularly archaic. There’s a common sense to it that supercedes the fact that it would be “more colorful” on TV.

    In a room full of people, it is still the difference between the light colored shirts and the dark shirts that is the easiest way to separate them on sight.

    Now, yellow gold or vegas gold or powder blue work fine. Maybe even Tennessee Orange. The problem is that some of the people making the decisions don’t know their ass from third base in that department. “You mean burgundy and black aren’t enough contrast?”

    So we end up with rules because, honestly, teams can’t always be trusted to make intelligent decisions about such things. “Kelly vs. Royal works, right?” No, not really, not as well as if one of them wore white (or one of the golds, say).

    And that’s just a provable (scientifically speaking, based on how the human eye processes input) fact that all the “Yes, but’s” in the world won’t countermand.

    Light-dark contast is the issue. And WAY too many equipment managers (and players for that matter) are absolutely clueless.

    Can anyone tell me why Vanderbilt Baseball is wearing navy and orange? Their hats are colored the same with an American-Flagified “V” insignia. White stars on the sleeves. They’re playing LSU on ESPN2.

    Photo:
    link

    I first turned the game on when they were batting (regular helmets), and thought the stars were like a commodore’s rank, but then looked that up and that would be only one star. The US flag hat cleared that misconception up fast. A little searching suggests this is their regular Sunday uniform.

    I admit I live in a completely different world than a majority that come on here so I admit I like seeing the MLB logo on the jersey above the names and on the back of the hat. That being said I also liked the initial roll-out of the NFL logo on the collar of their uniforms before the front got clustered up with the new trend of team wordmarks all over them which looks horrible. I hope with the swoosh switch we get rid of the NFL Equipment patch & go back to just the NFL logo again but a little bigger than the original. But my wish for that is I’d like to see them follow suit with MLB and do the NFL logo in the team colors. I’d be willing to mock those up along with some tweaks from my demented mind if someone has any suggestions of a good program to use on a Mac that is also the right price (FREE).

    It’s old news, but it was announced weeks ago that UCLA will play their home games, while Pauley is renovated, at the Sports Arena, with only a few games played at the Honda Center in Anaheim.

    link

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