Sandok: A Filipino Cookbook for Beginners
Visual Identity | Book Layout | Photography | UX
Overview
Senior project at NIU is a very involved project. This project was a self defined project with a UX required portion. We had to do research, define our deliverables, and execute.
The idea I chose in the end was a Filipino cookbook, filled with my mom's recipes.
Programs
01. Research
I wanted my target audience to be people in their 20s-30s who may not have as much experience cooking. I also wanted to account for cookbook collectors and what I could do to include them.
I conducted a survey and did some interviews to get to know my audience and what they value in a recipe.
Using the information gathered from these interviews, I constructed user personas for my main user groups.
02. Scope
After doing the research on my target users, I had to define the scope of my project. We settled on 22 recipes, as I planned to photograph each recipe myself, on top of designing and writing the book myself.
03. Skeleton
After deciding to go with actually getting the cookbook published via Amazon, I set my sights on an 8.5" x 8.5" book. This felt like a comfortable size, and I wanted to focus on making the layout beginner friendly.
Splitting the page into 6 columns gave a good ratio of space for the ingredients and instructions.
04. Visual System
For the main typography I used Helvetica Now, as it fit the descriptive attributes I was going for. Being a variable font, I was able to tweak it to my liking and create many styles that would all work well together.
The main color set was based on my mother's kitchen, but some extras were added to use to denote each chapter.
04. The Final Book
After all the design decisions were made, photographs taken, writing finished, and the whole thing proof-read I just needed to put the whole thing together. The time spent focusing on the wireframes helped ease the production process.
Overall, I am extremely happy with how this turned out, and it especially felt great seeing it officially printed and available for purchase.