The Beautiful Cookbook
Manefesto
The books I decided to redesign are a series of cookbooks titled ‘The Beautiful Cookbook’. I chose these as the current covers weren’t very appealing or appetising and I thought that the cover needed to represent the title. Each book features a different country of origin. I chose India, Italy and Mexico to focus on. The books are all hard-cover as a soft cover cookbook wouldn’t last very long if used a lot. I decided to create some tactile typography by deconstructing the main ingredients used in each countries cuisine. Pasta, herbs, tomatoes and cheese for Italy. Spices, rice, Naan bread and lentils for India. Avocado, salsa, beans and tortilla chips for Mexico. I created rough sketches to follow for each book title but when it came to creating the typography the food behaved differently to how I expected and the outcome was slightly different to what I intended. I really like how the food typography turned out despite this. It feels organic and natural. I didn’t Photoshop the images too much because I wanted to keep this aesthetic. I used Belta font for the title of the book cover as it felt natural and really seemed to suit the design for all three of the covers. The Spine of each book jacket is quite similar to the front, I have wrapped the image around and used the same font as the title on the front. The back of each book cover has testimonials on the successes of the book series. I sued Bebas Neue in bold as it is really thick and legible. I took more images of the finished food product and created a clipping mask with an inner shadow with the text to make it look as though the text was cut out and revealing the food. I feel as though I have been successful with my book jacket redesign. I have taken a cookbook with an unappetising, confusing cover and designed something that is more eye catching and will stand out at a bookstore.