My Job Is Child's Play

Our IT manager at Storey thinks my job is fun and games, which is actually true, though only about 2 percent of the time. A couple of days this week fell into that 2 percent, and I'd like to share just how happy that made me.

I'm working on a book called Candy Construction Company, which is about building things like race cars and castles out of store-bought candy, cookies, and other ready-made sweets. The photo below shows a few sample projects, such as snowmen made from doughnut holes, candy, and pretzels; Christmas trees made from colored Rice Krispies treats and candy; and Santa’s sleigh made from chocolate and candy canes and embellished with other candies.

Photo by Kevin Kennefick

For the chapter openers I wanted to illustrate the chapter titles out of pieces of candy. One of my inspirations was Pablo Ferro's design of the opening credits for Napoleon Dynamite, in which he created unexpected typographic illustrations on a hot dog, a ChapStick label, a school notebook, and so on. For two days I arranged candy and my husband and colleague Mars shot the arrangements. Here are a couple of examples.

I found the striped cottons at Urban Burp, a vintage fabric store in San Francisco.
I already had a candy-striped theme going in the book design,
so they screamed "Perfect!" for these photos.
Photos by Mars Vilaubi

Playing with your food (if candy can even be called food) is definitely fun. I highly recommend it.

Alethea Morrison, Creative Director