So I was in Border's the other day, looking at various books and
whatnot, when I discovered that this:
For those who don't know, the Commonsense Cookery Book is one of greatest cookbooks of all time, if only for the fact that it tells you how to make really basic stuff. Like toast. If you're a young bachelor looking to improve your skills in the kitchen I can't recommend it enough. But, this is a design blog, so let's look at the design, and not the
recipes. As a reference point, here's
my copy:
Excusing the general grime that's appeared in it's nigh on nine years of existence, the design is plain ugly and outdated even for the 90s. Too many different elements compete for your attention, much like Gordon Ramsay's crazy wrinkles on the
covers of his books, while the food photography seems out of place and too basic to be enticing. Given that the food is so basic, I'm glad the the redesign doesn't show any of it. Even on the insides.
Margaret Fulton and Stephanie Alexander have both gone down the path of not having any photography in their books, a decision that has
given them a reputation in cooking circles for not 'talking down' to their readers. How effective, then, is the lack of photos in the Commonsense Cookery Book, given that some of the readers for this are likely to be people who need to know how to cook an egg, boil water or make tea? I think it may have something to do with this book being comprehensive — it encompasses a larger audience than cooking novices. In addition to the
basics, it tells you how to fillet a fish, cook a pie from scratch and make
lasagna. None of which is especially complex, but the sheer breadth of material dictates a compact approach to the recipes.
This is an effective redesign that updates the style while keeping what made the original so popular. Also, it has some
faux letterpress!
This character set used information from topographic maps as its basis, creating a selection of glyphs that are effectively a second generation interpretation of the natural world. Using maps from Samoa, letters were traced following contours, terrain, vegetation variation and man made structures, such as roads, fences and buildings.
While the process that was used to create the letters and numerals is important, a larger factor was the act of finding and distinguishing typography from a graphic representation of data. This interpretation is a key part of reading and legibility, which both rely heavily on cultural heritage and upbringing. To quote Zuzana Licko: "You read best what you read most." If we accept that this statement applies to legibility, we must also accept that it applies to type design, in its many and varied forms. The act of finding and creating these typographic forms is strongly influenced by their creator's background—it can be assumed that if anyone else were to attempt to create a similar character set the result would be entirely different. This could be said of almost any typeface, but is especially the case with incidental typography.
Given that this act of finding is central to the glyphs, I crafted a book that would attempt to recreate the split second of realisation that comes with finding a new form within nature. To this end, I cut the letter-forms out of paper, french folded each sheet and bound them into a book. This creates a multi layered, textural effect that makes it, at least initially, difficult to distinguish the form from the background noise. In addition, I provided the reader with the rough latitude and longitude coordinates of each form with the hope that the reader would be able to view the landscape from which the glyphs are drawn.
