When Lauren contacted me to order a rectangular cake with decoration based on a poster that really just had text on it, we never imagined how special it would turn out to be.

The cake was based on the poster for a documentary film called Helvetica.

Helvetica is an independent feature-length documentary about typography and graphic design, centered around this widely used sans-serif typeface of the same name. Directed by Gary Hustwit, it was released in 2007 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the typeface’s introduction. (Thank you Wikipedia.)

As Lauren’s husband is a graphic designer, she came up with the idea to replace some of the letters on the poster with letters spelling out HAPPY BIRTHDAY TANNER..

The only thing she asked was that the font (Helvetica style) be spot on, as typography is Tanner’s big thing. Gulp. It’s a daunting task to please an expert by imitating something within his field of expertise.

Happy ending: Berliosca received the following message in an e-mail: The cake was perfect! Thank you so much. I had no idea it would be exactly like the poster! You are a fabulous cake designer. Many thanks. My husband was thrilled.

I wish I could brag about having the cool idea for this very original cake, but all the credit goes to Lauren.

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Most baby showers I go to (or make cakes for) have baby cute themes in pastel colours. The request for this cake was slightly different since it was for a more fancy-fashion type of event.

I loved that the client’s first words when she saw the cake were: Wow, that’s classy!

I learn a lot when researching the cakes I make. For example, I’ve learned about everything from juvenile arthritis to 3-D animation techniques because of cake requests. I have also dissected a tiger lily in the name of cake-science. This summer, thanks to an 11-year-old Titanic aficionado, I learned that contrary to our image of fluorescent-orange life vests, the actual vests worn by Titanic passengers were a light salmon hue. I imagine that 11-year-old Evan and I were the only ones who cared about this detail on the Titanic cake, but these are the things that keep me up at night.

Who knew that cakes could be so educational?