New Fox NFL Graphics Package

[whalersjets]

More pictures of the design at this link: http://michaelcinaassociates.com/350138

[TFoA]

Let's say it again: This is NOT a new graphics package for Fox Sports.

[Lights Out]

The article makes it very clear that this was pitched in 2006, but FOX decided to go in the exact opposite direction, Cleatus the Robot and all.

The source of the confusion is probably Paul Lukas billing it as a real new graphics package in a link to it on UniWatch.

That being said, I would love if FOX had a change of heart, dropped the insipid robot, and went simple with their graphics like this concept.

[jake22]

It looks too big and almost gives off an older feel, like the 90's. I think there is also too much white and also I am not feeling the way it is all boxy looking. When I think 'modern' and 'fox' I think metallic and curves and sleek, but this new look completely changes all of that. Overall I like the idea but for nationwide telivision it looks too cheap.

Edit: My bad, I didn't realize that this was old. Well anyway I gave my oppinion none the less.

[Red Wolf]

I love the randomness of the teams used in the mockups.

They use the same picture of a Denver home game multiple times with a wild variance of who is playing. It could be Denver-Pittsburgh, Denver-Minnesota, Denver-Chicago, or even Pittsburgh-Dallas.

[andrewharrington]

I like the typography here, but the box is just too big.

Not my fave as far as aesthetics go, but this is kind of edgy, and has some potential to be animated and combined with music as a lead-in/lead-out.

Again, a little too large, but it has a lot of nice function and it's very legible because of all the breathing room.

This one is pretty dead on. It's clean. It's non-obtrusive. The type has a little masculinity and style to it while still being classic and legible. It's perfectly functional and versatile as well as stunningly beautiful from a design perspective.

[burgundy]

That last one would be damn near perfect.

[logodawg]

I would agree. That last one is the best of the bunch.

[The_Admiral]

Still a lot of space that doesn't need to be used.

I was watching an NHL game from ESPN in 1995 and that was perfect. White letters on a small translucent box. As unobtrusive as it gets.

[scraw28]

that was about like the proposed NFL on CBS graphics

yeah, Lights Out is correct, those were mock ups proposed but FOX decided to go with the Windows XP graphics from 06-present

[fuzzy510]

There's clean and different, and there's "looks like it was put together by a high school television production class." This is, by and large, the latter.

Thank God FOX ditched it.

[RedRenesis]

That last one would be damn near perfect.

I agree, I would welcome a broadcaster that went in the complete opposite direction from present day CGI and went with something as scaled back as that. The only thing I think I would change would be to remove the NFL shield and put the NFL on Fox bug from the opposite corner in its place.

[TrueYankee26]

Let's say it again: This is NOT a new graphics package for Fox Sports.

And thank GOD.

[TheOldRoman]

Still a lot of space that doesn't need to be used.

I was watching an NHL game from ESPN in 1995 and that was perfect. White letters on a small translucent box. As unobtrusive as it gets.

I agree 100%. I don't remember if MNF used the same scorebug in 09 as the past few years, but the bug they started using when moving to ESPN is the best of the bunch. I want minimalism, not the crap networks currently use and not large colored boxes all over the screen.

The scorebug should be no more than half of the width of the screen, and it shouldn't be too tall either. Fox's box spans the whole screen and it's awful. And another thing, I don't need to see the ******* ticker every second of gametime, Fox. People have phones and laptops with which to check scores now. Don't worry, I am not going to turn off my TV or flip to another channel to see a score. I can can make it through games being updated on scores every 10 or 15 minutes. It is especially bad when it is a late game and they are still updating us on the Jaguars-Rams score from three hours earlier. And in the playoffs, they don't know how to fill space so they show MLB scores. Brilliant!

[PSUdraw]

Is ESPN/ABC the ones that shows the number of timeouts in the scorebug? I know one of the networks doesn't and that irks that they don't(I think its Fox that doesn't).

That is one info that I like having visual access to along with score, down and distance, and time with quarter.

[Joshawaggie]

I like the typography here, but the box is just too big.

Denver vs Minneapolis.

[neo_prankster]

This one is pretty dead on. It's clean. It's non-obtrusive. The type has a little masculinity and style to it while still being classic and legible. It's perfectly functional and versatile as well as stunningly beautiful from a design perspective.

I too would like to see at least one of the league's broadcast partners take this approach instead of feeling compelled to go over the top.

For Fox, I favor their 1994-97 package, with no robots in sight.

[chuckymack]

Okay, so the designer wasn't familiar with the NFL ? that much is certain. Let us not forget the NFL is the end-all, be-all of sports ONLY IN THE USA, and not all Americans are into sports. This man could be foreign, could care less about sports or ?God forbid? cares more about the actual craft of design than a team (or league) he's established some sort of bizarre mental affixation to. Having said that, I do wish the guy had done a little more research.

For those of you who (quite obviously) know nothing of design to be piling on this saying things like "Thank GOD they didn't use this" or "There's too much unused space" is kinda like me going in to Yankee Stadium and trying to tell Rodriguez how to handle a knuckleball. I'd be making myself look stupid, and so are you.

First things first:

There's no such thing as "too much unused space". I know this may sound odd to the uneducated, but the primary role of a graphic designer isn't to make things pretty. It's to make things legible to better communicate the message the client wishes to convey. The more "unused space" an object has around it, the easier it is to read. In this case, the client is FOX Sports and wants to communicate the score of a ballgame. That's it.

Secondly:

From a pure design standpoint, these graphics are miles above anything I've ever seen on a sports broadcast. As a consumer, I don't care about how many bevels, swooshes, flames or shines are on the infographics. All I want is the score, time, and possibly a few stats. And these mockups are not only successful ? they may just be groundbreaking.

The ones that work work really well. And the ones that don't? They still work really well. That's how you know it's good ? even the worse ones still function brilliantly. It seems to me that some of you are simply backlashing against something you aren't familiar with and don't fully understand. Everything this man presented is highly legible, informative, and devoid of any extraneous embellishment ? whether you like it or not.

[The_Admiral]

It's not groundbreaking for people who watch more than football. It borrows heavily from European productions of soccer and tennis. Probably cricket too, if for some reason I ever wound up watching cricket. It's also pretty crappy to suggest that this designer's work is so good that it's beyond reproach from anyone else on a design forum. First of all, it isn't, and if nobody's allowed to constructively criticize anything ever, then shut down the board.

I think you're wrong about unused space. I know what graphic designers do, but by having big opaque black rectangles to aid in the legibility of text, you're severely harming the "legibility" of the game that's playing out beneath the big rectangle. Communicating the score of the game can't come ahead of communicating the game, unless (and this is why Roman is still bothered with Jags-Rams scores three hours later) gambling on point spreads is so important to a plurality of NFL viewers that the score matters more than the game itself. I'm in favor of functional minimalist design without extraneous swooshes and beeps and bloops, but this is simply using too much space.

[TheOldRoman]

Okay, so the designer wasn't familiar with the NFL ? that much is certain. Let us not forget the NFL is the end-all, be-all of sports ONLY IN THE USA, and not all Americans are into sports. This man could be foreign, could care less about sports or ?God forbid? cares more about the actual craft of design than a team (or league) he's established some sort of bizarre mental affixation to. Having said that, I do wish the guy had done a little more research.

For those of you who (quite obviously) know nothing of design to be piling on this saying things like "Thank GOD they didn't use this" or "There's too much unused space" is kinda like me going in to Yankee Stadium and trying to tell Rodriguez how to handle a knuckleball. I'd be making myself look stupid, and so are you.

First things first:

There's no such thing as "too much unused space". I know this may sound odd to the uneducated, but the primary role of a graphic designer isn't to make things pretty. It's to make things legible to better communicate the message the client wishes to convey. The more "unused space" an object has around it, the easier it is to read. In this case, the client is FOX Sports and wants to communicate the score of a ballgame. That's it.

Secondly:

From a pure design standpoint, these graphics are miles above anything I've ever seen on a sports broadcast. As a consumer, I don't care about how many bevels, swooshes, flames or shines are on the infographics. All I want is the score, time, and possibly a few stats. And these mockups are not only successful ? they may just be groundbreaking.

The ones that work work really well. And the ones that don't? They still work really well. That's how you know it's good ? even the worse ones still function brilliantly. It seems to me that some of you are simply backlashing against something you aren't familiar with and don't fully understand. Everything this man presented is highly legible, informative, and devoid of any extraneous embellishment ? whether you like it or not.

That is silly. The purpose of the designer in this case is to design a scorebug for use by people watching the sport, not make art. I think these graphics are horrible, worse than anything I have seen including Fox's current graphics. Using non-bold serif fonts with smaller letters and large blocks of random colors in random places on the screen isn't good for this purpose, even if it is good design (and I don't think it is). Honestly, these are horrible. This isn't clean or minimalist, it is over the top indulgence, just in a different way than Cleatus. It's not flashy, but it is still very unnecessary and takes up prime screen space unnecessarily.