Towards the end of Unit 2, I began to realise that in terms of my outcome for the Major Project Proposal and, to some extent, in Design and Rhetoric, my work was lacking in focus or, rather, it was becoming too self-referential: I was making works that looked at the relationship between speech, writing and typography using, as source material or case studies, texts that looked at the relationship between speech, writing and typography. As satisfying as I find these circular, self-referential relationships, I began to realise that my outcome was becoming too much of a closed circle.
To some extent, the focus of my research had shifted: from work that attempted to amplify the authorial voice to work that examined typographic hierarchy. One of my main objectives of doing the MA was to try and understand why I made design decisions and to understand why I was drawn to certain types of design, proritising them above others.
It became clear that I needed a strong but simple focus to the project and a set of materials that I could use as a testing ground that I could hang my ideas on to and to start to explore and make sense of those ideas. Paul suggested (possibly half-jokingly) that cook books could be a possible focus. This immediately struck a chord. Living and Eating by John Pawson and Annie Bell had already been mentioned in a previous tutorial so a seed had been planted and, as it grew, I began to think that cook books could be a useful focus for my research. I am a keen cook and I collect cook books: I have about 35 books, ranging from facsimile cookbooks such as A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes by Charles Elmé Francatelli through 1960s vegetarian cook books to The Moro Cookbook via books by Nigel Slater and Nigella Lawson.
Above: Living and Eating by John Pawson and Annie Bell, US edition published by Clarkson Potter, 2001.