[stag_image style=”no-filter” src=”https://andrewelsass.com/wp-content/uploads/CDBCover2019-20.jpg” alignment=”center” url=”https://andrewelsass.com/wp-content/uploads/Copa-de-Boro-Ledger-2019-20.pdf”]
Due to my unrelenting need to track and organize data and progress, my latest esoteric Canva creation is a “media guide” for the Copa de Boro, the fantasy Premier League competition my friends and I started a decade ago.
“The Ledger” (named after a notebook two league members used to record their NFL Quarterback Club ’98 matchups back in college) tells our league’s story in the form of year-by-year recaps, charts, and player-by-player breakdowns, with plenty of in-jokes and photos from the league archives[1] woven in.
Now that our league has expanded from just four players in our inaugural season to 20 for our ninth, I joke that the guide is now just a way for me to make my own fun in a contest I probably won’t ever win again.
Really, I think I created the guide for the same reasons some Roman probably started etching gladiator wins into the side of the Coliseum—to give greater context, and perhaps significance, to something I enjoy.
(plus when you lose to the same guy every year it’s nice to be able to say, “well at least I didn’t score below the league average for the third straight year”).
In a way, the guide also inadvertently tells the story of our league members’ twenties. Scrolling through the year-by-year history sees the league start as a group of college students that lived within 90 minutes of one another, then expand to include the new places we have since called call home and the evolving friend circles that go along with.
Cover Rationale
For the cover, I drew inspiration from (ok, pretty much lifted) Sports Illustrated‘s April 2020 issue:
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Although I didn’t have the design know-how and/or tools to recreate the effect of nestling the main header into the seats, I am still happy with how it turned out.
I liked the empty and dissonant feeling of SI‘s powerful cover and thought it translated well to what was also a weird (but obviously infinitesimal by comparison) computer soccer season, too.
And since the guide itself is more about us the league members and less about the, you know, actual soccer players that score points on our behalf, I don’t think it will ever seem fitting to just slap a few stolen EPL action shots from Getty on the front.
As I update the ledger annually and the world (hopefully) returns soon to some sense of normalcy, I imagine this cover will stand out even more as the one from “that” strange year.
Interior Rationale
For interior inspiration, I perused the winners of recent years’ College Sports Information Directors of America’s (CoSIDA) Publications & Digital Design awards. I eventually landed on using the Missouri Valley Conference’s 2019-20 basketball media guide (winner of Best Conference Media Guide—University) as my compass.
Real media guides have heaps more data than our league’s (for now, anyway), so beyond a general framework, the format doesn’t follow too close. However, having a model definitely helped me when it came to deciding how to divvy up pages with a large amount of content on them.
It’s definitely not perfect from a design perspective (due to both my own limitations as well as Canva’s) but I think achieved a good balance of letting some content stand mostly by itself while compacting other data into tables or charts (click any image to open full guide):
[stag_image style=”no-filter” src=”https://andrewelsass.com/wp-content/uploads/2.jpg” alignment=”center” url=”https://andrewelsass.com/wp-content/uploads/Copa-de-Boro-Ledger-2019-20.pdf”]
[stag_image style=”no-filter” src=”https://andrewelsass.com/wp-content/uploads/3.jpg” alignment=”center” url=”https://andrewelsass.com/wp-content/uploads/Copa-de-Boro-Ledger-2019-20.pdf”]
[stag_image style=”no-filter” src=”https://andrewelsass.com/wp-content/uploads/4.jpg” alignment=”center” url=”https://andrewelsass.com/wp-content/uploads/Copa-de-Boro-Ledger-2019-20.pdf”]
[stag_image style=”no-filter” src=”https://andrewelsass.com/wp-content/uploads/5.jpg” alignment=”center” url=”https://andrewelsass.com/wp-content/uploads/Copa-de-Boro-Ledger-2019-20.pdf”]
Most importantly, my league got a kick out of it and I have a good foundation to work from for…
Next Season
I already have some fun ideas to help commemorate the Copa’s 10th anniversary, (which should hopefully take much less time to produce now that I have the general layout in place, but one of these years I should probably just buy InDesign already…) and it may just be the excuse I need to finally start dabbling in Python and Visme.
Although, if I actually win this season, who knows what I’ll feel like doing. Perhaps just 25 pages of photos of me bathing with the league trophy, Stanley Cup style.
Check out my fantasy soccer league’s media guide here (PDF).
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[1] Ok, just our Facebook group