“The United States of Mexican Food”

Banded together with the team over at Eater to create an illustrated editorial package on Mexican food in America. Explore the whole package here!

Welcome to the United States
of Mexican Food:

Challenge: Visually translate prominent Mexican-American dishes by location as well as by region.

Looking to keep visual prominence on the food while eliciting feelings of warmth and exploration, I decided to combine a dotted line reminiscent of treasure maps, with warm tones that land somewhere between desert sun and the aged ink of old travel postcards.

This idea of travel and playful collection-of-things evolved into a larger theme: Treating the package as a road trip, in-and-of-itself. Filtering the supporting headers through the idea that the writer is on a trip lived vicariously through the reader— across stories, across cultures, across meals—and with each new 'letter home', a postcard.

Special thanks to Gustavo Arellano for all location legitimacy.

Read the article here.

When I Had to Give Up Flour Tortillas, I Lost My Culture:

Postcard illo for an article focused on the writer’s journey of personal and familial identity. A piece driven by two matriarchs, the writer’s grandmothers are of central focus. Tortillas are excluded to more accurately represent loss.

Read the article here.

The Cheese-Smothered Comfort of My Hometown Mexican Chain:

Postcard illo for an article focused on the familiar feelings of a warm welcome home, and the visuals that make this particular place one of comfort.

Read the article here.

How Chipotle Supersized the
American Burrito:

Postcard illo & spot for an article about the chain crushing small businesses one huge burrito at a time.

Read the article here.

Process Sketches

Executive Editor: Matt Buchanan