Edible Baja Arizona – Print

In addition to Impulse Nine Media work, I also Art Directed Edible Baja Arizona Magazine, and was charge of all of the layout for the increasingly-popular magazine – all 180+ pages, every 2 months.

This entails expert use of InDesign in particular, with a lot of additional work with Photoshop and Illustrator. It also required a thorough understanding offset printing – getting great-looking photography when printing on uncoated paper, working with the printer, and ensuring quality across all 4,000,000 pages printed in each 26,000-copy issue.

Cover Images

Edible Baja Arizona‘s magazine covers have won several awards from the Arizona Press Club and the American Advertising Federation.

Award-winning cover: Ingraining Heritage Wheat. We got several loaves from Barrio Bread, and I knew I wanted a black background with the bread coming up into sharp focus. Photographer Steven Meckler did a great job with this.

Another award-winning cover, also photographed by Steven Meckler. One of the few cover ideas that Steve McMackin came up with that actually survived from idea to implementation.

World-famous illustrator Chris Gall worked with Steve to make a deeply surreal image – something that couldn’t be mistaken for anybody else’s cover!

Photographer Dominic Bonuccelli and Steve made this image at a tiny taco shop with Megan Kimble (Edible’s editor) helping as well. The idea was to have a “messy” cover, unlike the perfect food you see in other food mags.

Magazine Layouts

Award Winners

Detained & Deprived: Gold ADDY Award® – Editorial Spread or Feature Design

Homestead: Gold ADDY Award®- Editorial Spread or Feature – Series

Over the last several years, I’ve mastered the process of working with artists and photographers to get exactly the kinds of images I need when combining them with raw text in a way that enhances both the images and the stories.

Edible Baja Arizona - Hotel Congress

Here is a story about Hotel Congress, which was photographed by the fantastic photographer Steven Meckler. He expertly repurposed the famous hotel’s iconic sign to become the title of the article, with help from a local typographer, who had created a Hotel Congress font. He’s also in charge of working with the various illustrators and photographers who bring their remarkable work to the magazine.

Additional Layouts

: Steven Meckler’s photographs play off each other in this article about Tucson’s Downtown real estate in May 2017.

: A rare imageless layout highlights Byrd Baylor’s excerpt from “Four Seasons,” set in the IM Fell typefaces.

: Steven Meckler photographed this lab, which experiments with LED lights to grow plants in specific wavelengths – the photo’s color is unaltered.

: Dominic Bonuccelli took to Tucson’s South Side for this feature in November 2016.

: September 2016’s issue featured historical photographs of Tucson that required some restoration.

: July 2016’s issue featured Jack Dykinga’s amazing photography, and a cool treatment of the title in the clouds.

: Inspired by Pantone swatches, Shelby Thompson’s photos of smoothies highlights the May 2016 issue.

: Steven Meckler’s portrait of Janos Wilder highlights this opening to this story in the May 2016 issue.

: Adela Antoinette’s illustration for the September 2016 issue.

: The introduction to Debbie Weingarten’s story about women farmers was so powerful it brooked no imagery.

: Photo by Steven Meckler. From the January 2016 issue.

What the Ancestors Ate, from the Sep/Oct 2015 issue.

Another spread from What the Ancestors Ate, from the Sep/Oct 2015 issue.

Making Meat from the Sep/Oct 2015 issue.

Promotional Material

While the magazine generally speaks for itself in terms of quality, there’s a lot of ancillary information that comes with running a magazine, such as the Media Kit, which tells prospective and current advertisers everything they need to know about advertising with the magazine. This is in addition to postcards, t-shirts, and much more.