Most books in the series were a collaboration between Weldon Owen Publishing, American Girl, Williams Sonoma, and Mattel). I worked on every one of these books except for the first one, “Baking.”

As Associate Art Director/Art Director I worked on design, layout, and illustrations. For each book, I adapted the design (original “Baking” design by Alexandra Zeigler and creative director Kelly Booth). I art-directed the photo shoots, created mood boards, endpaper ingredient grids, sourced and created props and party scenes, worked closely with the photographer, prop stylists, food stylists, hair stylist, studio teachers, and the models.

It was a great experience working with the top notch team at Weldon Owen—Amy Marr, Kelly Booth, Alexis Mersel, Lisa Atwood, Emma Rudolph, and others. Also photographer Nicole Hill Gerulat, prop stylists Veronica Olson and Ethel Brennan, food stylists Lillian Kang, Veronica Laramie, Erin Quon, Kim Laidlaw, all their assistants and so many more. And to boot, the models were super cute and sweet to work with (including my son, his childhood friends, and our sweet neighbor :).

Note: these books were created for kids who want to learn to cook, not about the AG dolls.

You can see many of the book spreads here on photographer Nicole’s website, and additional images here. More book layout/design examples to come. Behind-the-scenes iphone snaps by mwa.