2007 Success Story

GIS Day 2007 at
City of Eugene
Eugene, Oregon, USA

The City of Eugene, Oregon celebrated its first citywide GIS Day with three cakes including an orthophoto cake. The Planning and Development Department hosted the successful GIS Day event with a poster gallery highlighting different uses of citywide aerial photographs for urban planning, parks and open space management, and public works project management.

The orthophoto-themed cake was a two-layer carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, topped with an image of downtown Eugene showing the central transit station and new library. The cake design was done with ArcGIS.

In addition to the cake, Sarah Zaleski, GIS Tech in our office (with help from the young daughter of my director), took old map plots to create a sedge of 16 origami cranes for decoration. The map-cranes were a real hit with folks; they also represented not recycled maps but a re-use!

I presented the results of our GIS event to department executives the next day; we ended the presentation by giving out small map-cranes from an origami bowl - a nice touch.

Submitted by Doug Terra, Senior Planner. Photos by Sarah Zaleski, GIS Technician.

Doug Terra, Senior Planner, cuts the Orthophoto Cake. An origami map crane sits on the table.

The Orthophoto Cake.

Want to know how Doug got the orthophoto image onto the cake top? or how you can get any image onto a cake top? See below.

I made the simple map layout, then printed it onto letter-sized paper. I gave the color hard copy to the local in-store bakery (Albertsons); they scan it and then printed the image onto a thin edible sheet using an ink jet with edible inks. The thin sheet is then removed from the backing and placed into the finished frosting of the cake (the store's, your own, or a one from a specialty baker). The max image size at my local store was 9x12 in., but I've seen 10x16 in. listed on a Web site. I was told that for images with a lot of fine detail that you will see a reduction in image quality over time as the frosting-like sheet and underlying frosting interact. I had them make the cake the night before the event, and it was held in a cooler until a few hours before viewing. I put the original plot next to the cake for reference. It was a nice gimmick to bring attention to the event and was my "poster" entry.