Final Project
I started out with a lot of ideas that were difficult to narrow down. I began thinking of content for some of my favorite ideas, which lead me to choose the cocktail cookbook idea.
My original spreads ended up being pretty indicative of what my final book looked like. I decided to make the first two recipes shorter, then include some bigger “jungle juice” type recipes for full spreads. The book was meant to be a humorous commentary on the drinking habits of college students, and CMU students in particular. I took inspiration from some of my friends’ favorite drinks (or most infamous drinks).
I began by making all the illustrations I wanted in Adobe Illustrator. I wanted to keep all the pieces separate so that I could reuse them in different contexts if I wanted to. For example, I made the cocktail umbrella separate from the red solo cup because it is in the cup on the front cover, but spilled over on the back cover.
My first spreads were almost exact replicas of my original sketches. It was clear that I needed a concept to keep the book cohesive and make it more interesting than a blank background. Julia suggested that I include a photo element, either using my own photos or others’ since I already created my own illustrations for every spread.
I ended up editing iconic party scenes from movies that my generation is familiar with. I wanted to keep it cohesive and allow the text to be legible over the images, so I made all the photos black and white and added a Gaussian blur. Once I put them into inDesign, I also decreased their opacity to make the text more legible.
For my final spreads, I added the images to the background, adjusted the titles of each recipe to make them more consistent in size, and moved some of the text and illustrations. Additionally, I had the idea to make the front and back cover look like a lined notebook. I added the lines from Illustrator, then got the book spiral bound at FedEx. I thought this was a fun idea because it reflects my image of a lot of CMU students — bookish on the outside, but fun on the inside.
If I worked on the project further, I would have liked to play around with the layout a bit more. Most cookbooks have to stick to a specific layout in order to keep the information logical and legible while people are trying to make recipes. However, since my book was more of a novelty book rather than a practical cookbook, I probably could have played around with it more.
