Category Archives: Credentials/Passes

Football Credentials for the University of Arizona 2012

Here are the designs for the rustic themed football credentials for this year. The main passes were modified to have unique colored backgrounds, blurred just a bit [no, Instagram was not used] and the main Photoshop file was a bit light this year, weighing in with just 84 layers. Along with the colorized backgrounds and other modifications, a subtle shadow was added to the interior of each athlete to add emphasis.

To answer the frequent question of “Why do you make them so attractive? They are only credentials,” I believe that every item should look as attractive as possible within the constrains of time and budget. I would hope that everyone receiving one of these credentials thinks, “Wow, this athletics department is top-notch.” I have heard of plenty of people keeping their credentials – they need to be THAT attractive. I’m just playing my part of making what I get to touch a bit more attractive.

The entire set is below, and continue on to see larger images further below.

[Most likely boring production specs]: Dozens of all season and game specific backgrounds were set 1-up in InDesign, merged with the unique barcodes and other information with our large variable data package resulting in one large file that was set to cut and stack. Programming to set it up took a bit more time with 2 additional home games and it resulted in one very easy file to produce – that makes the rest of production very happy.

Our last championship was in what year, 2007?

Every year I try to mix up the look and feel of the artwork for the pieces I get to work on for the Athletic Department. This year I went old school for that great trading card look. Now that we are entering the championship tournament, it is hard to believe that the University of Arizona softball team has not won a national championship since 2007. Really. 2007. That seems like forever ago, considering how often we make the finals and/or win the national championship. I dug in the archives to find the first credential I designed for the University of Arizona. I think Arizona could go for some more celebration as seen in that background photo. Then there could be some Arizona Baseball celebration in the wings as well, maybe some Kurt Heyer in the major leagues as well.

First up, the credential from 2008.

And then our current season of images. Arizona baseball and softball have a long history with the national championships.

Oh yes, there was a renunion going on for Opening Day in the old Toros ballpark. My dad played baseball and softball until he couldn’t [and coached for years] and my uncle played for the University of Arizona. Ah, history. Click on the image for a larger version.

’10 Credentials for University of Arizona Football

These credentials led off my design style for the 2010-11 school year with the white outline and shadow and nearly white background [I’ll be posting the rest of 2010 soon enough]. The design carried the red and blue colors well, while highlighting the players. With the thin white outline [like a paper cut out] the players were both frozen in a moment in time as well jumping out of the noise and chaos of the game and stadium. Add in a bit of a reverse glow darkening the inner edge of the player and the effect was complete. Why make attractive credentials? One was help bring the look of the program up a notch [every little bit helps] as well as making keepsakes. There was just one hangup — these sports credentials were beginning to get rather complex, both in amount of unique credentials as well as their ability to be easily identified by security personnel. For each game, there were 11 different credentials to keep track of [a total of 84 unique credentials for the season] and though they are attractive, a bit of functionality was lost.

I’ll spare you the numbers, but 4 All Season passes for All Access, Photo and Media, and then 11 game specific credentials with 7 games played made for 84 unique credentials with each set getting a unique set of numbers [per game]. It is a good thing to have some personalization software to add into our page layout application.

All this to say the credentials were produced without a hitch, and another exciting football was had.

10 Years in the Making

We’ve made it to the Sweet Sixteen and more. One could say this may be some payback for the 2001 loss to Duke in the championship game, but it may just be better to say that Arizona played one of the best second halfs EVER and transformed Duke from a never-ending powerhouse into a handful of guys that looked lost on the court. *whew!*

If anyone remembers the old NBA Jam video game [they have a new version out now] there were two frequently repeated phrases in the game. “He’s on fire!” and “He can’t buy a bucket!” – we were on fire last night. Let’s hope that fire continues.

The credentials for the previous year had exactly that – some flame action going on. Here are a handful of the credentials, as well as a look into the process of coming up with them.

How much flame is too much flame? Where does “Staff” and the year go? Believe me, there were plenty more iterations than just the few shown here.

On a few of the credentials we went with wood from the court, but should it be Arizona red or more like the original wood?

PAC-10 Champs & March Madness!

A day after the University of Arizona men’s basketball team became the PAC-10 champions and finished an undeafeated season at home I happened to bump into a friend visiting from  Cincinnati. He works with the athletes at Xavier where we pulled their coach. “Thanks for letting us have you coach,” I gleefully told him. Who would have thought that Arizona would be back to being competitive so quickly? Not I. We are back to the big dance, and who knows — maybe we will put in another 25 year string of appearances.

Each year we get to create the credentials for many of Arizona’s teams, and we put a bit more into the job as it is our team as well. In the end, there are individual credentials for a myriad of positions and sets for both season-long and game-by-game passes. If you are thinking of being sneaky, good luck with that — not only do we shred everything that we don’t ship, but we create identification sheets for the security members at the games. Did we mention that we also apply barcodes on credentials? We want everything surrounding the games to be safe, as well as look good [because that is what we do].

Good luck in both the PAC-10 Tournament as well as the big dance — here is hoping that we at least make it into the sweet sixteen!




’09 Football Credentials

With the credentials for 2010 wrapped up and in production, we can now show you last year’s credentials. We take security very seriously and didn’t want to take the chance of the 2010 credentials looking even remotely similar as to 2009. BUT, you really must attend a game this year and check out the 2010 versions as they are going to be great.

This all goes back to our desire to not just make good design but to make everyone else look good as well. We want the athletic department to look good, that people coming from other schools to a game and being given a credential will look at it and think, «whoa, this school is top notch». Granted, we take on all kinds of design work and we try hard to make everything we touch look good, but this is also our hometown team – we take pride in what we can do to help out.

Included below are a few of the dozens of credentials we create for each game, as well as a few large versions of the credentials without the required text. They would make for a nice set of playing cards.






Maybe we should be a bit more impartial, but having a UCLA player being bowled over on their head — it makes us smile.







U of A Softball Championship Regionals and Super Regionals

If you haven’t heard, the U of A softball team has a bit of a dynasty. Okay, more than a bit. Every year our exceptional coaches put together an exceptionally talented group of players and they tend to play, well, exceptional. This year has been no different, and the U of A hosted both some regional and super regional play. They are currently in the hole in Oklahoma and are up against what is considered the best team in the nation. Let us hope we beat them and continue on.

This was a rush job and we kept it clean and simple, making sure they would be easily recognizable credentials, going off the colors of the NCAA’s softball logo. It wasn’t a surprise that we continued to the super regionals, but it was a surprise that through some losses, the super regionals were hosted at the U of A. We modified them slightly so that anyone without red on their credentials would not make it in from the regionals. A slight gray gradient on the bottom made it just that much cleaner looking.

Arizona softball credentials 2010

PAC-10 Gymnastic Championship Credentials

The Gymnastic Championships were held at the University of Arizona and they needed some attractive credentials. What is most difficult about designing them is making sure they both stand out and recognizable. That isn’t always easy when everyone will be wearing different colored clothing, and they stand out just fine when they are on a white piece of paper. Once they are dispersed to several hundred people, things change quickly. We went with a solid background with a bit of color at the bottom – that should have stood out rather well. Arizona did well, finishing 4th in the meet [the PAC-10 is always stacked] and they are headed off to Los Angeles for Nationals.

PAC-10 Gymnastic Credentials

UofA Baseball and Softball Credentials

We continued with the look we created for the University of Arizona Athletic Department for the media and staff credentials for both baseball and softball. Each was individually numbered and an additional credential was made for the televised game as well [Arizona is good – we expect the addition of more televised games soon]. We would recommend catching one of the ballgames in our «rough» Tucson weather.