HOB
Page Design // Cover Jacket Design // Art Direction
HOB was published by Bloomsbury Absolute in June 2021. The cookbook includes 80 simple recipes that you can easily prepare at home without any fuss. Targeting young families as well as students and young adults, we wanted to design a modern book that was easy to use while creating a sense of home and familiarity.
For most of the recipes you only need one saucepan, but for about twenty percent of them you need two. To help the reader quickly distinguish between the two types of recipes, we decided to create a little saucepan icon that sits neatly next to the recipe title – so right where you see it once you start to skim the page.
We decided to go with a single typeface throughout the book that feels quite young and playful but still has a strong readability. Additionally, all headings and sub-headings are consistently lowercase to add to the youthful feel of the design.
The photoshoot for HOB took place amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. We had to rethink our whole art direction process to get our cookbooks shot on time for our deadlines.
For this book, the photographer, food stylist and assistant were on location, and our team dialled in to the shoot remotely. Although it wasn’t ideal, and it took everyone more effort to complete a shoot like that, we completed the shoot on time and were more than satisfied with the result of the images.
The imagery for the book was inspired by the theme of cooking on the stove, so we decided to stick to mostly overhead shots and lots of round crockery. Many shots were kept very simple with only one dish or saucepan in it to give nods to the stove theme. We ended up with a lovely mix of bright and more modern shots, as well as some moodier and homely images.
The cover is a continuation of the interior page design theme. Our brief was to come up with a brand-like cover, so that potential sequels of the cookbook would be instantly recognised. We achieved this by designing a logo title which includes a very small detail that readers would associate with cooking – for some it looks like a timer, others see an oven button.
