More Bowman

1993: Had this set followed the 1991 set, it would have looked wonderful. It has vibrant colors and great photos. But because it followed the 1992 set, it comes across as almost a copycat of the previous year. It's still a great looking set though.

1994: Bowman did change the look this year. They further solidified the B brand. I like that the photos went all the way to the card edges, ahead of their time. My gripe with this set is the use of gold foil for the player names. It's very hard to read when it's over dark parts of the underlieing photo. How about the shadow on the Frank Viola card? I see a football center getting ready to snap the ball.

1997: Jumping ahead a few years, Bowman has now begun to firmly establish the prospects concept. They used different colored borders within the master set. The black border is sharp against the red and blue, and will become a common thing for them in the following years. I wish more of the prospects had action photos, but that might be because they had no major league action yet.

1999: The gray pattern in the black border was a nice change. The photos are great. The blue and red differentiation between prospects and veterans is used again. I'm undecided on the use of autographs going up the right side. I like the attempt to try something different, but I'm not sure the look is that great.

2003: Jumping ahead a few more years, Bowman stuck with the design they'd been using for several years now; black border, red and blue for veterans and prospects, colorful, action shots. I know if it was my job to come up with the new card layout every year it would be difficult to have new exciting ones every year. But man those late 90s and early 00s Bowman sets all looked kind of the same. By this time Bowman had started doing the draft picks and prospects subset, something they still do to this day.