I love cookbooks. When I get a new cookbook, I sit down and read it from front to back. Food people are great. They always write with such love and fondness for their subject. Also, I enjoy the design of cookbooks. Some cookbooks are very straightforward and technical. Other cookbooks are very artistic, with brilliant images and lovely watercolors. Cookbooks generally have a theme, and the best cookbooks emphasize that theme throughout their design. My current favorite is "Watermelon and Red Birds" by Nicole Taylor, pictured in the center of the image below.
Because of my love of cookbooks and my family's general love of cooking, I decided to design a family cookbook. To create a consistent theme, I needed to determine the icons of our family. These include daffodils (my mom's favorite flowers), the iconic red of our childhood home in Kentucky, and the overall Americana aesthetic of my parent's decor.
These icons are presented right away on the cover. Yellow silhouetted daffodils are against a backdrop of a red gingham pattern suggestive of a picnic blanket. The colors and fonts evoke a classic Americana feeling of March in Kentucky. For the content, my family sent their favorite recipes of beloved meals, and we went through the archives of my grandparents' recipes to collect the classics.
The title "With Love," was inspired by a sign off of writing a letter to a loved one. That is how it feels when we cook for each other. It is our expression of love to one another, demonstrating how we want to take care of one another. At this point, the cookbook has been formatted and ready for photos. Now, all that is left is cooking the recipes, having a photoshoot, and, of course, eating!
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