Football Programe Covers - Test Prints

Having finished the designs for the Liverpool and Everton programme covers them we tested them on matte and gloss stocks so we'd know what stock to use for the final prints. This would also allow us to rectify any problems with the current designs.

We found that the gloss worked a lot better as it allowed a much deeper colour than the matte - this made the drawing and the stripe of colour down the back a lot more aesthetically pleasing on the gloss than the matte. On top of this the glossy layer would give the programme cover extra protection against things it could come in contact with at a football match such as rain, beer, and grease. The fine text printed slightly better on gloss than on matte too, but it still needs to be thickened up slightly to aid it's legibility. 

As well as thickening up the thin text, we're also going to remove the line from below the hand on the Everton cover as it intrudes too much on the drawing. We decided that we'd keep the line above the hand as removing it would make the text above it look a bit floaty. Removing lines in these circumstances for the Sheffield United and Sheffield Wednesday covers is something I'll decide on if and when it's necessary. 

When it came to folding the programmes I found that both stocks performed equally well, so there's no need for us to find a stock different to the gloss available in the digital print resource.

When trying to wrap the covers around the existing Sheffield United programme cover I found that I'd made each cover 4mm too thin, the simplest way to fix this is by increasing the thickness of the inner and outer margins by 2mm each as in theory the only thing this will do is shift the drawing to the right 6mm. If this becomes a problem I can remedy it by making the drawing slightly bigger.

Another change that needs to be made is the positioning of the text on the spine. It's currently set to align with the top of the heading text, which makes it vary from team to team as the heading text is inevitably slightly different from team to team due to it being a different word. When the programmes are placed side by side it looks messy as shown below - they should all be aligned to the top margin.

Joe also suggested we add the teams crest to the bottom of the spine, but it would be too small to see clearly what it was. Instead I'm going to look at putting the name of the team at the bottom instead, but I'm not sure if there'll be enough space in the grid.