THE ATHLETIC: How Topps reinvented Series 1 for 2024: “We have color at our disposal; why not use it?”
Topps’ flagship Series 1 debuts February 14th and this year’s release refreshes the brand with an innovative design featuring a neon border and black smoke backdrop.
It is a massive departure from what we’ve seen over the years from Topps’ Series 1 line (although they’ve put out beautiful, creative cards, this is a bold new look). If you’ve collected Topps’ Cosmic or Fire lines — or even Upper Deck’s Skybox Metal Universe and Panini’s Phoenix — you’ve been treated to bold, colorful designs with a lot of imagination before. But for the flagship line of the gold standard in card collecting? It’s a little wild.
And we love it.
But we had to talk to someone about how this happened. And that led us to Robert Grabe (the designer) and Clay Luraschi (the head of product development).
Grabe, based in Brooklyn, NY, and Paris, France, has been a senior designer at Topps for a decade. He attended the revered Savannah College of Art and Design, majoring in sequential art (comics). His favorite comic artists? Legends Jack Kirby, creator of hundreds of iconic characters (ever heard of Iron Man?), and Jim Lee, who illustrated X-Men No. 1, the highest-selling comic book of all time…