The second in the series of STEPS teacher manuals, the Ohio Social Studies Manual, is complete and is on its way to participating school districts. This cover design features a composite image of two photographs by Laura Balliet.

The two photos are very similar. Both are compositions of the curved stone staircase on Martin Luther King Blvd. in Cleveland. The blurry figure decsending the stairs was present in both images, however I thought the composition of one offered a better view of the staircase, whereas the position of the figure was better in another shot in which the steps at the bottom of the frame were hidden because the camera position was slightly more to the right.

It was a fairly simple process in Photoshop to combine the best of the two images into a single composition. The stencil-like title was added by using the underlying image itself as a displacement map to give the text a texture that matches the texture of the stone. As a final touch, this text was warped to give the baseline a slight curve similar to the curve of the wall.