football tab cover photo

If I go that route, I would have to take the picture from above, or have the linemen in a huddle to get the faces. But, the more I think about it, the "linemen" angle could be a feature on the inside of the tab that simply included mugshots of the players.

 

I think we got a winner. I think we are finally starting to give cheerleader their just do. It is difficult to be pretty, athletic, and positive. They try as hard as any football player.

 

nay, they try more.

 

Take the inspiration from your avatar. Get someone from your four worst teams place them on a street posed like the Fab Four and title it: Abbey Roadkill.

Seriously if you have to go bland, don't do helmets. Anything but helmets. I was "encouraged" to do helmets last year because, "publisher doesn't want to piss anyone off," though I had an awesome cover design/theme that our so-called graphic artist crapped on and torpedoed, saying "that's just stupid" repeatedly in our meetings with the publisher. She won.

How do I know it was awesome? The state's big daily came out with the exact same concept (it was almost like I was sitting in on their planning sessions). Mine would've beaten theirs out by two days, making them look like they copied me (though we had no knowledge of the other's plan). Quitting on the spot crossed my mind, but we were in the process of replacing the roof and windows at home, so I just settled for a big, "fuck you very much".

 

If there's one nugget of advice I can offer, it's get real people in the picture. New Stadium? Get a coach or some practice art. Helmets? Maybe it'll work, if there's someone polishing them or handing them out.
How do I know this? We had what looked like a goddamn piece of clip art on our fall preview (at the Executive Editor's behest...he wanted to make sure every school was treated equally in the preview).

 

good for him. we don't give enough equal treatment.

 

Well-played, millsey. Make mine a Carlsberg.

 

I did something similar to this for a basketball season preview.

We covered like 30 schools, but five main ones. I went out and got jerseys for the five schools, we went to one of the schools with the photographers and did a bunch of shots in the lockerroom with the jerseys hanging from them.

 

Thanks again for all the help. Still a lot of time before the tab comes out, but I appreciate everyone taking a minute to give me some ideas.

 

I hate the "every school should be represented" logic. Bull crap. If a school sucks and no one besides the parents go to the games, why should I have to pass up better cover designs? Two years ago I used an action shot on my cover of the biggest school's star running back to go with the cover story on its tradition of strong backs. At the last minute my pubisher stepped in and said I had to redesign the cover so all the schools were represented. I convinced him to let me include all their names at the top of the page (which looked out of place), but he had the designer photoshop the big school's logo off the player's uniform and helmet. It was crap. I fixed that in the future by going with the design I wanted and including some text at the bottom of the page that says "including previews for . . ."