INDUSTRY:
FOOD + DRINK | SENIOR PROJECT
CLIENT:
SENIOR PROJECT
YEAR:
2022
EXPERIENCE:
BRANDING | PRINT DESIGN | PHOTOGRAPHY
Chez Henri – A Cookbook For My Nana
about.
My grandma, Bonnie (shown below in her garden), has collected recipes from her friends and family from over 50 years and has compiled them into a book filled with photocopies, handwritten notes, binder paper clippings.
Is this a legible and understandable book she has compiled? Hardly. With different fonts all over the place, illegible handwriting from 50 years ago, unclear directions and pages falling out, her and I both agreed it was time to give it a face lift.
Over the course of 10 weeks, Bonnie and I worked together to create an abridged version of the new and improved Chez Henri Cookbook. With her creative and culinary direction and my design and photography knowledge, we were able to put together something timeless for my family to cherish for many more years to come.
challenge.
This cookbook will be read by people from all generations and all different cooking backgrounds in my family. From teenagers to old grandmas and grandpas, the most important thing was to ensure that the book was accessible for all.
In order to do this, the book needed incredible consistency. I made sure that each recipe followed the same styles from listing ingredients, to chef notes, to instructions. I used InDesign paragraph/character styles throughout the cookbook to ensure continuity between each page. Each page followed the same layout and spacing using an 8 column grid.
process.
Before anything, I needed to define a brand for this book. Within the first two weeks, I locked in the header and body fonts and color palette. The meat of this project was the cooking and the photographing. I needed these recipes to come to life, and with the help of my grandmother I was able to do so. She and I cooked all of these recipes and shot them myself in her kitchen. I shot these images on a Nikon D7500 and edited them all in Lightroom.
Throughout this project, a large majority of any work I did was either in Adobe InDesign or Adobe Lightroom. I used Adobe Photoshop whenever there was something out of place in the image that needed to be removed.
results.
Overall, this project was one of the most fulfilling projects I have ever made. Not only was I able to use my photography skills and my graphic design skills in tandem, but I was able to design something meaningful for my family. Given that this was a college final project, the biggest challenge was the time crunch. I hope to revisit this book in the future and create more recipes now that I have all the time in the world.
Beyond the pride I feel in the final product, I cherish the memories I made with my grandmother while making all the recipes and going through the photography process. She is just as proud of it as I am!
