Activity Guides for Kids

Parenting Magazine's Discovery Pullout offered me an opportunity to be a crafty designer. Each issue Assigning Editor Christine Olson and I poured over the author’s list of activities. Our cubicles became informal testing labs as we worked up samples and added activities of our own. The covers were assigned to fashion photographer Thomas Heinser. I constructed and shot the interior stills with tabletop photographer Jerry Spagnoli; the how-to illustrations and props were supplied by the inimitable illustrator Bud Peen.

It was a dream team for this designer: Thomas photographed wonderful kids; Jerry was extra patient during endless takes of the lego toy trying out a homemade parachute; and Bud built models of anything I wanted including the most elegant paper plate decoder I have ever seen. All in all, we had a lot of fun — which is how it should be when your audience is ten and under.