MORE INFOGRAPHICS FROM EIGHT BY EIGHT MAGAZINE.

I was watching a championship game, and the winning team were presented with a huge, heavy trophy. I realized that I didn’t really know what many major trophies looked like. So I began looking for information about them. They’re shown to the same scale, color-coded by type, and compared in size to the 2014 World Cup soccer ball. Surprisingly, they’re not all well-documented. My international infographics contacts helped me pin down the more difficult details. A few points: The most important one of all, the World Cup, is the smallest. The gin and tonic, my favorite drink, is part of the branding of this spread.

A Premier League team doctor gave us the inside details on the essential physical exam that a player has to undergo before a club finalizes the deal. At the bottom, he describes the common injuries that sideline players. Illustration by Michael Hoeweler.

How NYC FC’s pitch fits (tightly) into Yankee stadium. They also sometimes have gridiron football games there, so I showed how that fits too. I really like size comparisons, so I put several related ones in. I’ve always wanted to get the Statue of Liberty into an infographic, and this was my chance.

Record-breakers. Gareth Bale is no longer the most expensive player in the soccer world. As of a few weeks ago, it’s Paul Pogba of Manchester United. (See the last post, he’s on the cover).

What if the World Cup was decided by a nation’s wealth, or size of population, and not by playing soccer matches? The U.S. or Switzerland would be the champs, not Germany.

Professor Grimwade holds forth! From the University of Eight by Eight. This is probably the kind of infographic I tell my students at OU not to make. A bunch of fun items with several gratuitous graphic elements.

A detailed portrait of the London-based teams that play in the Premier League. By Kim Lightbody.

Tracking where the current English top-flight clubs (as of 2014) have finished the season. It starts from 1888, when the four-tier system began. By W.Tyler Hall and Martin Salazar.

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.