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L.A. Times Finals Stuff

The NBA Finals preview cover and an inside page from the L.A. Times centered around a retro photo, and oh did the Times ever nail this one.

The Times got Bird and Magic each to write about their rivalry. Here's the PDF: Download LATFinals2008.pdf

And the Game 1 live front:

That reminds me. I kinda need a new TV.

Anybody know where I could get a good one?

I mean really good. One you could even classify as a "champions TV." Anyone?

Deputy design director Derek Simmons elaborates on both days:

Late last week, (design director Michael) Whitley and I were trying to come up with good ideas for a preview. We thought about doing something with the championship banners for the two teams. Thought about doing something typographical with all the great names like Bird, Magic, Chamberlain, Russell, et al. And then we had this photo. This famous photo that as soon as you saw it you were like, "Oh, yeah! 1980s NBA. Celtics. Lakers."

We ran a filter on it in Photoshop, threw it on an InDesign page and started thinking about how it would look to have someone paint a modern version using Kobe for Magic and Pierce for Bird.

Slam dunk.

Roberto Parada immediately connected with the idea and agreed to paint it despite the crazy turnaround of a few days. We worked with him through the weekend to find just the right photos for reference. Everything fell in place.

Wednesday night was a mad rush to get everything just right. The final illo didn't arrive until around 7 p.m. our time, which gave us just two hours to pre-press, make color proofs and pray for good registration. And our press guys nailed it.

Game 1 cover is from a standalone six-page section that we'll do for all the games during the finals. It has maybe the most hideous ad in the history of cover ads, but we were pleased with the way the furniture turned out. Although building all of it in CCI was a monumental chore.

Stay tuned for more throughout the series.

Boston Globe previews NBA Finals with style

The Boston Globe had an eight-page special section in Thursday's paper previewing the NBA Finals.

Retro cover illustration by Andy Smith, design by Brian Gross.

The inside pages featured toppers that broke down the 10 previous championship meetings between the Lakers and Celtics.

A1 went classy.

The Celtics won Game 1. I'll see if I can gather some pages from that.

Osgood, Absolute posters

A couple more Red Wings posters from artist Rick Nease of the Detroit Free Press.

Sports pages from Detroit's Stanley Cup win

Game 6 goes to Detroit as the Red Wings win their 11th Stanley Cup.

A handful of pages from the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News on the jump.

That's the Freep "instant" cover on the right, final A1 on the left. Thanks to designer Ryan Ford for the pages.
Download a PDF of the sports front below.

Download RedWings_08Cup.pdf

From the News, thanks to Cindy Lacy:

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Online, the Freep front page:

Lots of photos, splitting them into multiple galleries to boost views.
Also they are set up for collectible page reprints and T-shirt orders.

Sun-Sentinel breaks down 50 worst album covers

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel presents the "50 worst album covers ever."
It's not sports, but I digress for the fun.

Coast to coast in the 2008 NBA Finals

It's back to the future for the NBA Finals (and how many times are you going to hear that this week?) as the Lakers and Celtics meet up.

The last time these two faced off for the title: 1987.

Bring back memories? Or were you in diapers?

A look at the conference-clinching pages in L.A. and Boston:

Get a closer look at the Boston Globe page below.

Download globe_finalblow.PDF

Roger Moore in ...

Hmmm. Red Wings are up 3-1.
Who's king of the spoofs?

More Pittsburgh Post-Gazette cheer cards here.