Dinner Deconstructed
cookbook design & inspired by all my own recipes
A deconstructed guide on food pairings, suggested sauces and yummy proteins. all recipes made by me and inspired by those I love. Graphic art using found images to construct my dishes visually. Fun way to express my love for cooking and design with a digital cookbook intended for print or digital use.
Visual Menus
Brown paper bags and handwritten grocery lists are some of the first things that come to mind when making decisions about what to cook for dinner. For my cookbook, I chose to incorporate a brown paper bag texture behind the visual ingredient lists. This texture represents the grocery bag that carries the ingredients home and creates a familiar connection between shopping, ingredients, and cooking.
I continued this concept by presenting each ingredient in a cutout, sticker-like style with expanded white edges. This treatment is inspired by the small identification stickers commonly found on produce. By translating that familiar visual language into the cookbook, each ingredient becomes its own recognizable sticker. The combination of the brown paper texture and illustrated ingredient stickers creates a playful visual system that connects the experience of grocery shopping directly to preparing a meal.
Mix-Media Compositions
The mixed media compositions In this book were created to symbolize unique dishes by digitally collaging found images.
I used color masking to intentionally obscure individual ingredients and pieces of food, representing the mystery and possibility of what you might create. By leaving parts of the dish unseen, the reader is encouraged to imagine what lies beneath each shape. This also leaves room for personal interpretation, especially with ingredients like meat, where the final appearance can change depending on how well it is cooked.