Charles Apple

…is this double Spadea cover featuring a triple-faceted illustration of Michael Jordan.

This was the cover of a special section that inserted into last Thursday’s Chicago Tribune.

The blue section on the left — covering roughly a third of the page — commemorates Jordan’s college career with Coach Dean Smith at the University of North Carolina:

Turn that Spadea page to find a yellow-themed section depicting the 1992 Dream Team at the 1992 Barcelona Summer Olympics:

Peel back that Spadea to find the full-page Chicago Bulls-themed cover:

Without a doubt, it’s the most clever use of a Spadea I’ve ever seen.

Trib sports designer Josh Crutchmer wrote last week at Sports Designer about how they pulled this off.

The idea for the cover was conceived first by Joe Knowles. Steve Cavendish put it together and tabbed Roberto Parada to do the three illustrations, representing NC, Barcelona and Chicago. The day it ran, Kellams and I (he in the press room and me in the office) essentially threaded a needle blindfolded by moving each of the three cover pieces right and left by fractions of an inch until they all lined up.

Read about the entire project in the Sports Designer blog.

Find illustrator Roberto Parada’s web site here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 17th, 2009 at 7:57 am and is filed under Illustration, Innovative ideas, Sports design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.