Process Documentation

ft. Netflix Habits

Inspiration:

For the initial concept—the grandma cookbook—I wanted to tune into some vintage vibes. My primary idea was to use the recipe card as a visual motif throughout the cookbook in order to invoke that vintage feel. I didn’t get far enough, but I was planning on using some kind of monochromatic print.

Sketches:

As the sketches probably reflect, I’m still kind of confused about how all of this information occupies one page.

Early work:

I was having a hard time deciding on a layout, especially without the final content. I was so frozen by the stress I feel about this particular project that I really couldn’t get myself to move forward quickly enough.

Changing directions:

With that stress in mind, I wanted to move forward with something that I know really well and didn’t have to think a lot about, which is how I landed on the sandwich concept. At the outset I liked the idea of the bar separating ingredients and directions, but with such a small, minimally laid out page, I don’t think I needed it. But from the beginning, Kaylee and I talked about making sure to space the ingredients and directions differently, so I wanted to continue with that in mind.

Playing with photo size:

I had quite a bit of time leftover after I established my concept, so I played with photo size, seeing if maybe a smaller photo could make the page more interesting. In the end, I liked what I had.

Playing with back cover:

Kaylee mentioned during a desk critique that my back cover, the bottom photo, was too hard to read. So I tried a couple different things, for which I had to make a new sandwich. I didn’t really like the crumb picture, and the uncut sandwich wasn’t square enough. So I took it back to the original picture I had there, put the transparency back to zero, and changed the font to white. I find it more readable, but I think some of my classmates disagreed.

Changing fonts:

News Gothic was fine, but it wasn’t fun. I wanted to do more with the font to be fun! I tried out different combinations, like Futura with American Typewriter (which was unsuccessful), then I embraced more of the condensed Futura for the titles, and more Futura for the body. After looking at the text on a printed copy, I realized the body text was a little too big, so I made it smaller for the final.

Adding footnotes:

Something I did right at the end was add a little footnote to jazz up the sandwiches. It really screwed with my grid, so I had to revisit that for a few hours to make everything sit on the page comfortably.