If you're a HOW subscriber (or if you've ventured into a bookstore in the past several days), you may have seen the latest issue, with the HOW logo made out of bright green seedlings. Given both the season and the content (the issue's all about nurturing and harvesting your creative energies), the garden theme seemed ever so appropriate.

During our cover brainstorm session, we talked about actually growing the logo. Seeing as how I fancy myself quite the green thumb, I offered to give it a shot. Art director Bridgid McCarren and I discussed what kind of seeds might make pretty little sproutlings, and we settled on trying two kinds: grass and radishes. Me, I love the little heart-shaped radish seedlings.

We purchased soil, seeds and planting trays, cut templates of the logo that we carefully filled with seeds and set the whole works up in the sunny window in my cube. Then we waited.

Turns out, when radishes sprout, they really take off! By the time of the photo shoot, they were way too tall and leggy to "read" as the logo. They'd grown perhaps a bit too well. (The grass seed? A total dud.) So Bridgid, bless her soul, took tiny scissors and tweezers and "planted" just the tops of the baby radishes to form the logo that you see on the cover. It wasn't a Photoshop job, but it did take a bit of creative engineering to pull off.

Click on the cover below to see the lineup of creative goodness in the issue.