TORONTO—How do you pack 100 years of history into a space about as wide as a credit card?

That was the challenge faced by Toronto studio Bensimon Byrne, who created four commemorative tickets for the 100th Grey Cup of the Canadian Football League (CFL).


The team at Bensimon Byrne dug deep into the league's past for inspiration, working with the CFL to choose four players who it thinks best represents each quarter century until present: Lionel Conacher, Normie Kwong, Russ Jackson, and Doug Flutie (the latter the most recent).

But it doesn't stop there — each player's image is made up of no less than 550 names of CFL players and teams. "We decided to build these player images out of the names that are etched on the Grey Cup. It all comes from the cup," explained David Rosenberg, partner and chief creative officer.


Toronto-based illustrator Shingo Shimizu was hired by the firm to build the images using Adobe Illustrator, he added. After about two weeks of conceptualizing, Shimizu worked with reference photos of the players to churn out the typographic images in about a week. "It was all kind of up to [Shimizu] about how the names were balanced," said Rosenberg.

There's more than 10 different fonts used in each image, said Filip Mroz, an art director on the project. "We used some scripty fonts that mimicked a particular era, and we tried to fuse them together with more modern sans serifs," explained Mroz.

These tickets are meant to be keepsakes, and aren't printed on standard paper. "We do love that it's printed on hard stock, with a pearlescent finish for anti-counterfeiting purposes," said Rosenberg. The special tickets are about eight inches long and 2.5 inches wide. The colours used for the tickets represent the primary colours of all eight current teams.

Speaking of history, Bensimon Byrne has a lengthy working relationship with the CFL, said Rosenberg. "We work on the league's marketing materials and branding, and we've been doing it for 12 years," he said. "I'm also a lifelong Toronto Argos and CFL fan, and I'm a little bit of an amateur historian of the league."

For those who don't have tickets to the big game at the Rogers Centre in Toronto on Nov. 25, these tickets will also be sold as framed collectors sets.