MAKING INFOGRAPHICS ABOUT “THE BEAUTIFUL GAME”.

Eight by Eight, an independent soccer magazine, is the brainchild of ace designers, Robert Priest and Grace Lee.

http://8by8mag.com  http://priestandgrace.com

It’s become well-known in the magazine design community for its brilliant page design and illustration. And in 2015, it was chosen as “Magazine of the Year” in the Society of Publication Design Awards. An amazing achievement for an indie mag, produced by a small group of volunteers on a very small budget, to come out on top of all the usual heavy-hitters.

I’m very fortunate to be the consulting graphics director, and thus can occasionally bask in the reflected glory. Here are a few of the infographics we’ve run. I’ll be showing some more in future posts.

Who doesn’t love spectacular volleyed goals? For the first issue, I imagined that I was at a game and saw all of these gems, one after the other. In fact, they happened over a couple of seasons. (Player illustrations by Jeong Suh at Bryan Christie Design.)

The ideas for the graphics usually come from watching games. For example, a player pulled off his shirt after scoring a goal (not an uncommon sight), revealing a crazy tattoo. I starting thinking about other player tattoos I’d seen. After some research, I made a rough compilation (in Photoshop). From there it proceeded to this beautifully illustrated version by Michael Hoeweler.

Referees get a lot of aggro from the fans. At best, we don’t notice them. But what are they up to? I realized that I didn’t really know as much about this as I thought. Note the tongue-in-cheek captions. Soccer fans have a sense of humor about their over-excited reactions to events on the pitch.

Below is an analysis of all the games ever played between Barcelona and Real Madrid. By Catalogtree.

For a guide to the 2016 European Championships, I included some handy French phrases, stadiums, and tourist tips (as France is the most visited country in the world).

I think it’s important to note that the magazine is made by soccer fans for other soccer fans. Enthusiasm for the subject drives the content forward.

One of these woven badges (made by Avery Dennison) was inside every copy of issue 7.