Design
Design ended up playing a larger role in this project than I had originally intended. When I started the project I knew that I needed to select colors, fonts, and even decide on a layout. My goal was to create a layout that paid homage to the Hispanic culture without distracting the eye from the photography.
After I chose how I wanted the layout to look, I knew I needed to add more to my overall book layout. I played around with various ideas, such as flower line art on the recipe color blocks, icons of food, and embroidery. You can see my sketches and the ideas I experimented with below.
Fonts
I used three fonts within the book.
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Dalliance OT Roman was the font I chose for the title and the main headers. I chose this font because it's easy to read but has personality. I liked how the serifs on the font weren't cold and hard. Instead, they were smooth and curved, which helped add an inviting tone to the text.
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For my headings within the recipes and ingredients, I wanted a sans-serif font that would contrast nicely with the main header font. Montserrat Bold is a clean font that is easy to read. I chose it because I loved how the clean look created hierarchy with the main header and helped the eye continue through the recipe instead of getting stuck.
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I decided to use Montserrat Regular for my body copy because of how well Montserrat Bold looked with the main font. Montserrat Regular made for the perfect body text because the font weight was lighter. The distinction between my main header, sub-header, and body fonts looked very clear when I used this font.
Color Scheme
I created this color pallet because I wanted bright, inviting colors that weren't the traditional colors (the bright reds, blues and yellows) associated with Hispanic items. I chose these colors because they paired well with the woven cloths I used in my photos.
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I used this color scheme for the main header titles, and the color blocks on the recipe pages. I also used these colors for the backgrounds on the end papers, the table of contents page, the introduction page, and the food section pages.
Layout Design
In the beginning, I played around with several variations for the layout. I initially had wanted the ingredients to be beneath the recipe name with the various ingredients listed out into two columns. I liked the idea until I started playing around with adding colored blocks into the layout.
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Adding color definitely helped bring a brighter feeling to the layout, but I also felt that it disturbed my original idea.
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I decided to place the color block on the left-hand side and include the ingredients within that box. Having the ingredients within the colored box helped me distinguish the ingredients from the recipe. This also allowed for more space for the recipe steps.
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For the dividing pages, I knew I wanted to showcase several food photos. I decided to have a full page of color on one side and on the facing page I placed four food photos. I had played around with the idea of showing more photos but decided against it. More than four photos felt like it could be distracting and would take away from showcasing the food.
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Below are two examples of my final layouts.
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Embellishments
After I had decided what I wanted my layout to look like, I knew the cookbook needed something. But what?
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I initially wanted to choose an element from the photos and create a photo icon that would reside within the white space of the page. When I began putting the recipes into my layout, I swiftly realized that I very much needed that space for many of the recipes and therefore decided against the photo icons.
The next embellishment I tried to incorporate into the book was hand-drawn flowers. I really love the imperfect and simple look of hand drawn flowers. I created two flowers in Procreate using my iPad Air and Apple Pencil. I was hoping the flowers would add a homey touch to the recipe pages, but I didn't like how it looked when I placed the flowers over the color blocks.
The final embellishment that I tried and actually ended up implementing into the cook book was embroidery. With this illustration I wanted to mimic the look of Spanish tile while nodding towards the embroidered artwork that can be found on many cloths and clothing items in Guatemala.
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To create this look I purchased a Procreate brush set created by Abbie Uproot. To create this effect I used Procreate's symmetry tool and drew my design using the satin stitch brush. After I created my design I created a Gaussian blur to create a shadow. After that I duplicated the original layer with the stitching and placed a blending mode on the layer, which created the final product that you can see below on the left.
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Since the cook book is called Hecho Con Amor, I made sure to incorporate hearts into my embroidered tile designs.
A Special Touch
Although many of the recipes contained in the book were never written down. My grandmother started to recognize a need to preserve these dishes and had written two or three recipes before I began this project. I decided to include one of the recipe cards into the book because I wanted to show what my grandmother's handwriting looks like and have it preserved in the book since she is a big reason why my family is able to enjoy these recipes today.
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In order to add the recipe card, I scanned the recipe into my computer and removed the background using photoshop.
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Below is the finished result.
