FLORIDA TODAY — March 21, 2016
Why it’s special: That is indeed a real cake. Florida Today celebrated its 50th birthday in 2016, and it’s not every day that you hit a milestone like that. For the occasion, much of the content was planned for publication on the Sunday before the actual birthday to maximize audience reach; however, between news-section packages and a special section, most of the best archived photos were used. During the planning stages, I joked that I wanted to bake a cake for the site to celebrate their big day — and it ended up not being a completely crazy idea. My manager and the site liked the concept, but the execution posed some challenges: namely that shipping a sheet cake across the country isn’t viable. So I designed a sheet cake incorporating all of the daily furniture elements (nameplate, folio information) and sent it to the site so they could have the cake prepared locally.
I art directed the shoot remotely, giving the photographer a few variations of uncut and cut cake photo ideas. (It worked out perfectly that there was an archive photo of the paper’s founding publisher cutting a cake on their first day.) The page represents one of the biggest challenges I’ve taken to date; it also shows the impact I can have in shaping a project when I’m involved from inception to completion.