2022 Onyx Vintage Football Forum

Wow. Some of these cards are just really poorly designed. I understand that they tried to correlate their color choices somewhat to the school colors for the player, but seriously?  Cade York, for example, played for LSU.  The border graphics on the card are purple.  OK, no problem.  But the text is Yellow!  Bad enough on the front of the card against the white background, but the back of the card is a fairly dark brown color.  Even with the card in hand the text is difficult to read.  Just a really, really bad design choice.

Is this a college or Pro set? Most of the teams are college yet some are the pro teams.  Either way I'm not a fan of this set, the few cards with scans look bad.  Thankfully there are no Missouri players so I don't have to worry.

I think it's mostly a college set. I only have a few cards (team collector myself--I have a few of the Browns draft choices). Looking at the checklist, it's almost all NFL rookies in college uniforms with a handful or so older players thrown in.  I did a quick look online at some of the veterans (specifically Justin Herbert & Randall Cunningham). Both are shown in pro uniforms (Chargers & Eagles), but the pro team is mentioned nowhere on the card. The only team identified is "College: UNLV" (or whatever) on the back. 

I often see cards where I shake my head wondering who in the company approved designs / colour backgrounds & print. Two that immediately come to mind are 1994 OPC and 1995 Fleer. In my time in the military, it was driven into us that when making presentations, look over the final draft to make sure that things were clearly legible. This included coloured fonts on coloured backgrounds, and using a font that was clear between different letters and numbers. Page or slide numbers were ALWAYS located in the same place on every page. Fonts in each individual section of the product were to be the same for each and every page.

I miss the vintage days where the card # was often in its own small design such as a baseball. Some newer sets make a better effort in doing this but even now, we see sets, especially in Topps update that use a different font size for some of the cards in the set.

I think the card companies would do well to have actual true collectors (not investors) as advisory staff to review all of their proposed designs.

Can't help but chuckle. I had those same formatting lessons beat into me as well. Now, in the corporate world, I cringe when I see a presentation that looks like it didn't get any love. Moreseo when it's something I'm editing/proofreading for someone else.

With that said, it's Onyx and I, personally, don't take them seriously as a company and this is another reason why. Wow.... 

sandyrusty wrote:

I often see cards where I shake my head wondering who in the company approved designs / colour backgrounds & print. Two that immediately come to mind are 1994 OPC and 1995 Fleer. In my time in the military, it was driven into us that when making presentations, look over the final draft to make sure that things were clearly legible. This included coloured fonts on coloured backgrounds, and using a font that was clear between different letters and numbers. Page or slide numbers were ALWAYS located in the same place on every page. Fonts in each individual section of the product were to be the same for each and every page.

I miss the vintage days where the card # was often in its own small design such as a baseball. Some newer sets make a better effort in doing this but even now, we see sets, especially in Topps update that use a different font size for some of the cards in the set.

I think the card companies would do well to have actual true collectors (not investors) as advisory staff to review all of their proposed designs.

Looking at the checklist, Chad Johnson's team is Cincinnati Bearcats. He went to Oregon State, but played for the Cincinnati Bengals. Should the team be changed, or is there another Chad Johnson that I don't know about?

Baseball is a little better. The product itself isn't that good. I got a box, which has 4 cards. I only got 3. I'm not a fan of the design either.

Yeah, it should have been the Bengals. I changed it, but I'm not sure if that's correct or if it should be the college team.  Here's what the FAQ says:

Cards of players in professional uniforms

• What is the hierarchy for assigning teams to cards?
  1. Use team in any "Traded to, Signed with, Now with, etc." statement printed on the card
  2. Use team printed on the front of the card
  3. Use team logo printed on the front of the card
  4. Use team name printed prominently on back of card (not in biographical write-up)
  5. Use team logo printed on back of card
  6. Use team uniform shown on front of card

To me this is kind of a borderline case. Is the college name "prominently" printed on the back of the card or is this considered a biographical write-up?  I can see the argument either way.  If it's considered prominent, then #4 says to list the college teams. If not, #6 says to use the pro teams.

Hey there, I'm a little late to the party, but I just wanted to say that I'm the one who added the checklist and put the Bearcats for Chad Johnson. It's just because Onyx only provides the city on their checklist and no school, so I just assumed it was a college team for most players. My bad!

If we are talking about bad design choices the 1975-76 Topps basketball set has to be mentioned. The card number is printed in dark blue in a dark green box. Some of them are completely unreadable to me. I had to actually use the checklist to find the player to know what card number he was. (before the Database existed).