publisher: Random House
type: Book, complete project
spec notes: One-piece case-wrapped hard cover. 464 pages, printed full color. Includes a page-marking ribbon.
Samin Nosrat‘s long-awaited second book, with photos by Aya Brackett, was just as challenging and fun to collaborate on as Salt Fat Acid Heat.
This book rides a fine balance between being and simultaneously not-being a sequel to a big hit. And besides Samin’s name recognition, it had to answer to being familiar enough to its predecessor that it created continuity, while being different enough to signal a departure. You can see some of the continuity in the size, the font choices, and its colorfulness—all apparent in SFAH, but this time with some modification. And the biggest difference introduced here, photography, gorgeous, rich photography.
Once again, we began the collaboration while Samin was still writing the text, figuring out what the intent of the book might be, and imagining what kinds of photos would be needed to communicate that.
Samin wanted the book to be welcoming in a way that dissolved any threshold the reader might feel about reaching the kind of cooking in the recipes. She wanted it to feel like her own home: an accumulation of comfortable and sentimental items that build a personal coziness, but never so fussy that it would be ruined, if that’s the word, by an imperfection or spilled salt. The book had to make the reader feel like there’s little difference between our personal lives and our trappings because we all have sort of the same familiar things around us—maybe not the exact same Samin wanted the book to be welcoming in a way that dissolved any threshold the reader might feel about reaching the kind of cooking in the recipes. She wanted it to feel like her own home: an accumulation of comfortable and sentimental items that build a personal coziness, but never so fussy that it would be ruined, if that’s the word, by an imperfection or spilled salt. The book had to make the reader feel like there’s little difference between our personal lives and our trappings because we all have sort of the same familiar things around us—maybe not everybody has the same exact dishware pattern, but the dishware pattern that you have at home makes you feel the same as the ones I have at mine make me feel.
We came to an art direction then that would use actual textiles, dishes and flatware, serving utensils, and knicknacks from Samin’s home, even her kitchen and yard, and it would be shot using mostly natural light in casual settings that showed the beauty of the food, the richness of a home life, and a little bit of the drips, spills, and even char that come with that when one cooks.
While waiting for the photography dates and with the manuscript nearly completed, I set out to design the page from the raw text. Without the un-framed, hand-drawn art from the first book and knowing photographs for the most part have 90-degree angles defining them, the question was how to continue that feeling of varied scale, of wandering eye, of loose edges.
I worked with a variation in text blocks for certain sections, some changes in font sizes for different types of text within the book, and the inclusion of a second body-text font. I worked on ways to lighten the Samin-storytelling sections with a bigger but light sans-serif font, drop the size down a bit on the same font for the exposition in recipes, and use a serif for the actual recipe steps—all in the hope of subliminally signalling to the reader what sort of text they were looking at at any moment. Then the page would play with single or double-column text blocks, and the informational text on the margin to help a cooking reader find the line they needed while looking at and away from the book.
In one further step to tie it together, there’s a combination of photography within text in all the chapter starts. Each one is typeset individually to find a cozy setting for all the words to group together and build a sense of comfort within corpulent font, characters almost touching each other like ten or twelve people at a table for eight.
And finally, in a exercise to have readers go off of the recipes without following note by note (which is Samin’s hope for all the recipes, but she wanted to add in some practical exercises too), we created how-to matrices for three of the recipe-ideas. They are somewhere between choose-your-own adventure and a technical flow chart, where the reader begins by choosing an ingredient and following the line to the next ingredient, building as they go until they get to the end, a delicious dressed dish or salad put together by chance almost as much as by choice.
Once again, I’m grateful that Samin wanted to work with me and thankful to Random House for allowing an outside designer to meld into their workflow. And to Robbie Jeanne, videographer on Samin’s team, for coming to my office to shoot the short clip below. Thank you all!!