ReLeaf is the Colorado Springs Independent's medical marijuana booklet that is released 3-4 times a year. I was asked by my manager to handle ReLeaf again and I was thrilled since the designer has a lot of creative freedom on this project. The only direction given was that it was for the Fall issue, and needed to be marijuana related. 

The cover for this one came in one of those "AH-HA" moments after thinking about the project for about 5 minutes. I thought that a traditional Autumn style food shoot in the vein of "Better Homes and Gardens" would be great if I put a slight twist on the apple pie in the center. 

I went shopping after looking at some stock imagery for layout and positioning inspiration and then I got to work baking my pie.  

 

Baking Pro Tip: If you don't have an apple peeler corer slicer, you should get one. It's an amazing time saver. 

Living in Colorado means that getting access to marijuana fan leaves to use as a stencil is a non-issue.

I knew that the cutout on the pie would probably expand and lose detail as the pie baked so I took some inspiration from my mother and baked the cutout as well just in case. 

My coworker Matthew Schniper brought his camera over and took a few shots with me giving him direction. Notice that crack in the pie on the bottom right? I took of that in final image by using Photoshop amazing "content aware" feature. 

After a little post production and a trip to Indesign I had the final print ready image. I'm pretty pleased with the project and had a blast working on it. How about that drop cap R, eh?