“The United States of Mexican Food”
Illustrated package for Eater
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