Speaking From Experience Design Boards and Crit

The feedback I received in our first crit was mostly positive, with good feedback on my plans for production, making it a cookbook theme with recipes illustrated in a decorative manner that could be folded out and used as posters as well.

Since my whole concept is to be saving money in terms of food, I had given some thought to making it very specific, towards perhaps easy recipes to be used as substitutes for takeaway meals or substitutes for fast food. After my crit it was advised that I could direct the cookbook at packed lunches. When I thought about this, people do spend about £4.00 a day on buying food in our around college for lunch which adds up to quite a lot. It was also suggested that I could create an accompanying product to the cook book, perhaps a custom lunch box or bag.

Earlier in the week, Danielle Muntyan and I had decided to collaborate very casually since she had the idea for a typogateaux themed baking book. We each wanted to get on with our own book but keep it of a similar style and theme as each other so they could work as a two part. However, when I spoke about this in my crit, Simon and some others suggested that we don't get bogged down into working in a partnership. Both ideas were very specific and may not actually end up falling in to the same category, so we are rethinking the decision to work together.

Speaking From Experience Research

It was simple for me to choose a route to go down with these brief, just by looking at my two main issues when leaving home, one being having to figure out how to manage my money (the hard way) and the other cooking for myself, and since I'm a terrible cook I rely on ready meals and takeaways a bit too much (which doesn't help with the money management).

http://voices.yahoo.com/college-student-eating-habits-bad-health-the-5273449.html?cat=5

http://colourful-foodie.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/students-eating-habits-myths-exposed.html

I decided to combine the two ideas of eating habits and money management in the form of a student cookbook, but with so many variations of student cookbooks I knew I needed to do something that would give it a competitive edge. This tied in well with the money management side of things as I realised I could include pages with cheap alternatives to some food and ingredients and perhaps some healthier alternatives to takeaway and fast food options.

I had already planned to keep the design simple to mirror the simplicity of the recipes and to relax people who might not be great cooks. I started looking at books in this style:

I love everything involved with this design, the book like appearance lends itself so well to the actual content and the fold outs can easily double up as something decorative which would be ideal for a student living in a cell like bedroom in halls.

Plenty of these examples embodied the design style and fusion of food and lifestyle that I wanted to include in my own cookbook, but the standout design for me was the 'Bread and Butter' fold out cookbook, the idea is interesting and innovative and I would love to explore something similar for my own design.