SportsDesigner.com

Now you can really hate him

Brett Favre is slated to grace the cover of Madden 2009, which likely erases that curse thing, unless the retired codger slips in the tub or something.

Check out EA's Madden page for a cool retrospective of each game cover, starting with 1989/90.

The new game hits stores Aug. 12.

Guardian Sport redesigns

Britain's The Guardian relaunched its sports section online this week with a new design.
Writes SE Sean Ingle:

The redesign allows us far greater versatility: if we want to embed video on our fronts, we can. If we want to blow up a brilliant photograph to fill half the page, we can. No longer are we restricted to a template as stale and inflexible as a dyed-in-the-wool Stalinist after the fall of the Berlin Wall ...

One of the nice features is how you can whittle down each sport page, from football to individual clubs, or from golf to Tiger Woods, or from motor sports to Lewis Hamilton. So many Web readers seem to want to bookmark their niche.

On the whole, the Guardian uses typography, color and images with impeccable style for the Web. Don't forget, this is a media power that wants to bring its brand into the U.S. through the Web.
Good stuff.

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LOGO ALERT: Watch out. As of the draft this weekend, the NFL's shield logo is different!

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You may have noticed, but I deleted the SportsDesigner NING network. It just wasn't catching on and that's perfectly fine. We'll keep looking for ways to make this site better.

Post-contest haze

On the agenda for the rest of the week as we dig out from the Best of SD 2007: A contest rundown and assessment, complete with notes about small papers and international entries, as well as a look ahead to next year; and there are still some lingering basketball and Masters pages to share.

And, on April 10, I spoke at the 2008 American Copy Editors Society workshop in Denver. I was on a panel with Sara Quinn of Poynter, Katie Schwing (formerly) of the Colorado Springs Gazette and Andy Bechtel of UNC-Chapel Hill. We talked about story forms, informing (in print and online) and how editors and designers can better communicate with each other and in the newsroom. I promised way back when to share the handout I brought, and here it is: Download ACES2008StoryForms.pdf