Food is Medicine: USA Today

Food is Medicine: USA Today

Completed: Fall 2025

Client: Bluebird Consulting & the Food Is Medicine Coalition

Scope of Work: Illustration & Print Design

This full-page USA Today ad was built entirely by hand before it ever became a digital file. Paper scraps, paint, tape, recipe fragments, brushes, cut photographs, little pieces sliding around the studio table for days. I wanted it to feel assembled by an actual person with opinions and fingerprints instead of something perfectly optimized inside a software grid.

The collage featured real clients, real work, and bits of material that referenced process and making — handwritten marks, layered textures, clipped imagery, things slightly overlapping in imperfect ways. Honestly, I spent an unreasonable amount of time moving tiny scraps of paper by less than an inch. Collage does that to your brain.

I liked that the final piece still held onto some softness and irregularity even at newspaper scale. Especially in a national publication where so many ads feel aggressively polished or focus-grouped into oblivion. This one felt human. That mattered to me.