Two new developments and something I forgot from last time add up to a short new sports graphics update.
I have to say, I’m not a fan of NBC’s new post-relaunch graphics package, which looks really bulky and amateur. It almost looks more designed for Comcast SportsNet’s purposes than anything else. The text is off-center enough that it actually looks like some of my PowerPoint mockups.
On the plus side, NBC learned their lesson from their last change to their timeout indicators and this is some of the best I’ve seen from a graphic designed for them.
Also, NBC, ESPN, and Turner are all now using two-line boxes for the display of player info, leaving only the NFL’s main partners, CBS and Fox.
On the NBA front, ESPN continues to tweak old graphics to fit them into the new graphics package, continuing to make me wonder what the point is because aesthetically, it looks worse than the old one. And the NBA package continues to use the two-line format for whatever reason. On the other hand, there appears to be some sort of weird drop-shadow effect, and the specific graphics used for player info is the same as for college basketball.
Oddly, FSN went to spelling out team names for its new NBA graphics. I call it odd because if there’s any version of basketball (or really any sport) where the use of full names over abbreviations is justified, it’s college basketball. So why did FSN decide to continue wasting space for the college game but fill the space for the NBA? I could see if the NBA graphic was redesigned later, because the NBA season started later, but does that mean FSN will change its college graphics to match?
Also, ESPN deciding to indicate when teams are in the bonus may be becoming a trend, because FSN’s new NBA graphics do the same thing… in one of the most awful ways I’ve seen. If you’re going to have such a space hog you might as well at least put timeout indicators on it. We’re going to be in for some awful graphics for the next couple years. Be afraid… be very afraid.
I forgot to mention the Big Ten Network on my last roundup, perhaps because I blocked out the hideous way they showed the down and distance the first week of the season. Who thought this was a good idea? WHO?!?
If they wanted to preserve the shape, shouldn’t they have designed it to begin with to shrink neatly like Fox’s graphics? Thankfully, they eventually came to their senses. Beyond that mess, the BTN’s new graphics mostly serve the purpose of bringing them closer to the rest of the Fox stable, without quite being the same thing.
This next video will mean we don’t have an all-YouTube graphics roundup, but thank god, because YouTube in Chrome coming from Google Video Search, which should be a harmonious homogenous experience, was a complete nightmare, and you can read my tweeter for the full carnage…
And with that, I expect us to be done until baseball season starts.
Morgan, I can’t for the life of me figure out how the yellow foul rectangles work on the ESPN NBA broadcast. They don’t correspond to team fouls in the quarter, even though I see the word ‘bonus’.
Where did you get the impression they were fouls? They’re timeouts.