Sticking to the brief

Sunday, 24 May 2009

Please excuse the large photo - if I make it smaller you can't see the details and I want you to be able to see the details.  A few weeks ago I was asked to donate a cake to a charitable organisation for a launch they were doing (I'm avoiding mentioning the name so I'm not googled but if you can read you'll work it out - get it.. read..).  I actually declined because the size they wanted was huge and it would have cost me heaps to make it so I offered to donate my time, if they paid the expenses which I think was fair as it took a big chunk out a few evenings and my Sunday to make it. Anyway - the interesting thing was that each State was getting a cake done by a local cake maker and we all got the same brief:

Open book cake, perhaps yellow icing on the side for pages of the book, and white on the top for the open page that reads…the blue & red logo at the top (without click, flick and collect, and without website – too fiddly)Then underneath:  Celebrating 30 years (30 YEARS LARGE) of reading to help people with MS (in red icing writing). The cake should be about 40 -50 cm in width, about 30 cm deep and 12cm high.

And these were the results. It's not often that this situation occurs so I found it really interesting to see how everyone else interpreted and executed the brief. I'd say that one of these cakes was home-made (and good on them for having a go - so I'll leave it alone) but the rest are professionally done. I was going to run a little competition to guess my effort but I think it's fairly obvious (although maybe not!).  Anyway - I think mine sends the clearest message and is the nicest shape however I do like the one next to it (although why is that person asleep on the top of the cake?) - I have to admit it never occurred to me to put anything extra on the cake as it wasn't in the brief but it does look cool with the little books.  Interestingly I was the only person to use the double page for the text, which meant I didn't have to work out what to do on the blank page (see middle right for example of that problem and top right for an example of a solution although the ipod looks a little bit like a poker machine!).  Okay. Turns out it's not that obvious which one mine is - it's the bottom right - I thought the benchtop would give it away if nothing else!