A Tale of 12 Kitchens:
Family Cooking in Four Countries
Jake Tilson
Published by Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2006 (Paperback)
Design and layout Jake Tilson Studio
Photographs Jake Tilson
Jake Tilson is an artist, graphic designer, typographer, photographer, cook and author; he has researched, written, photographed and designed this very unique cook book. The design of the book articulates Tilson’s vision of how food evokes memories of time and place and the importance of food as a kind of ‘social adhesive’. The design is multilayered, with connotations of scrapbooks, and is crammed with many details that are not revealed until the second or third reading; densely layered photography plays a large part in creating this sense of collage, and the general feel of the book is of an assemblage of memories and associations. The book is a distillation of Jake Tilson’s particular experiences: of growing up as the son of a pop artist in 1960s West London; of living in the country and learning to cook aged 15; of travelling, as a young man, to Paris and New York; of living in Scotland; exploring the USA with his young family; and finally settling in multi-cultural Peckham. The book presents the signifiers that define these places and experiences in a singular idiosyncratic design language that is particular to Tilson and which, on first glance, is somewhat overwhelming, but that, nevertheless, is so rich with visual inventions that the reader is won over and is happy to enter his world.
Of all the books I have recently analysed, this one is the most transparent about its genesis: Tilson has supplied a huge amount of information, about the tyepfaces, papers, photography and the structure of recipes, that is not usually presented in cook books. This information is both incredibly useful and endlessly fascinating: it serves not only to reveal the author’s passion for cooking, travel and graphic design, but, intentionally or not, it also positions the book in a very different space from the more commercially orientated books that I have looked at. In the book, Tilson says that ‘I suspect that I’ve written this book for our daughter, Hannah, as a guide to the significance of cooking, sharing and eating in our lives.’ It is hard to imagine the concept for this book coming from a marketing department: the book was in a highly completed state when Tilson sold it to the publisher. I’m interested in how a book finds its market; in this case, this book feels like a labour of love that, like most art, is created for the creator, not an audience but, if it does find one, as this obviously has, it can only be a bonus for everyone.
Front cover
The cover features a full bleed photograph that shows a small frying pan or skillet containing three plums, sliced in half, and a chunk of cake, possibly Pandoro, resting on what appears to be a windowsill or doorstep. The dominant colours in the photographs are muted, greyish pinks, purples and greens coming from the surfaces that the pan is resting on: earthenware tiles and different types of grey stone. The bright orange-red plums, the golden yellow cake and the shiny, light reflecting oil draw the eye to the frying pan which is black and well-used and forms the dominant central element of the composition. The different surfaces that the pan rest on divide the cover into three horizontal bands of unequal size; they suggest collage which is a major feature of the book. Compared to the exuberance of some of the interior spreads, the front cover is surprisingly restrained and only gives a taster of the content.
The title of the book is the second dominant element on the cover: it is reversed out, in white, from the terracotta tiles that form the band of colour closest to the top of the page. The terracotta tiles form the darkest band of colour on the cover and offer the best contrast to the white of the title. Below the title, placed on the right and set at a third of the size, is the author’s name. The title and author’s name are set in uppercase Nizioleto, a stencil typeface, which, according to the helpful credits at the back of the book was ‘Developed by Jake Tilson in 2003. The font is taken from Venetian street name signs.’ Other elements include a sub-title and a quote from Claudia Roden, both set in different weights of Meta, designed by Erik Spiekermann, reversed out, in white, except for Claudia Roden’s name which is printed in a warm brown. Finally, a decorative band of bright colours, arranged in a grid, runs along the top of the cover giving connotations of Mexican fabrics and hinting at the stronger, brighter colours that appear on the pages of the book. The credits tell us that the cover is printed on Zanders Zeta Hammer, a paper that has a tactile quality, emphasised here with a matt plastic coating.
Inside Pages
The book is 20 cm by 25 cm, printed full colour on 140 gsm Tauro, a white, matt uncoated paper. The layout, which is designed in the spirit of collage, initially looks unstructured but a closer inspection reveals that most of the layout is designed around a simple one column grid with slightly wider inside margins, a deep top margin and narrower bottom margin. To add variation and introduce an air of spontaneity, titles, photographs, illustrations and some body text are occasionally aligned to a narrower outside margin. In general, the design appears relaxed and informal with layers of images and text giving connotations of a scrapbook.
Several different typefaces have been used throughout the book. Initially this is a little overwhelming - but there is order within the chaos: the body text and recipes are set in Century Expanded, in one weight but in different colours; chapter openings are set uppercase in the previously mentioned Nizioleto; the appendix, index, captions, introductory and ending paragraphs are set in Meta. In addition, each chapter uses a special font to evoke the era or country featured in that chapter - Pioneer in chapter one, Pomodori in chapter two, Empire in chapter three, Skirlie in chapter four, Gotham in chapter five and Johnston Underground in chapter six. Many of these typefaces have been developed by Jake Tilson and have been treated in various ways - rubber stamped, for example - to make the connotations of the typefaces even more explicit.
Aside from the recipes which are presented as scrapbook pages, the bulk of the recipes are surprisingly traditional and restrained in their layout: they are generally printed in two colours - a red-brown for the commentary and method and blue for the ingredients which are spilt into two columns across the width of the wider column. Titles are set in the appropriate typeface for each section in a palette of vibrant colours, and additional information is set on a narrow inset column in uppercase Meta printed in black.
The book is divided into sections, each dealing with the cuisine of a particular place or era. As previously mentioned, each section uses a special typeface, often developed specially by Jake Tilson that has connotations of that particular country or of the era that the section is set in: the author has written illuminating notes about each typeface and the reasons for its use. In addition to these typefaces, other decorative elements such as fleurons and border patterns contribute to building the atmosphere in each section. Patterns in photographs are used throughout the book to create a sense of place for each chapter: ceramic tile designs; fabrics; carpets; and street markings. Colour, too, is hugely important in the book: Jake Tilson is an artist with a particular eye for colour that he has developed in previous projects such as Atlas magazine: the colour is rich, bold and saturates the uncoated paper; rusty browns, ochre reds and blue-greens dominate. Pages of full bleed flat colour announce each section; terracotta red; mustard yellow; Cerulean blue; and deep purple; these colours echo the strip of colours that appear at the top of the front cover, linking it to the content.
Photography is used extensively throughout the book to illustrate the finished dishes and to illustrate the ephemera - shopping bags, food packaging etc - that Tilson has collected on his travels. Equally important are photographs of recipes in scrapbooks; photographs taken in different locations; and photographs taken of family occasions. The majority of the photographs are presented as collages, in layers with smaller images placed above larger images in more and more inventive ways. Almost all of the photographs are presented as full-bleed and, in many cases, a larger full-bleed image serves as a background for several smaller images or, occasionally for one large image. The effect is that the images are never read in isolation: they are always juxtaposed with other images, adding resonance to their meaning. The layers of images combine with the multilayered typography to create multiple readings and meanings: a feast for the eyes.
Importantly, as noted in the book by Tilson himself, ‘All photographs are 100% natural. There is no styling of food photographs in this book. Every plateful was eaten seconds after being photographed - sometimes before. All crockery was used as-is and as-found, lighting was used as available.’ Pans, utensils, glasses, crockery and cutlery, although taken from disparate sources: the domestic and the diner; different countries; and from a timescale spanning 45 years or so, are unified by Jake Tilson’s eye - the book is a distillation of his taste. Many of the photographs are low resolution and quality, occasionally sourced from video or mobile phone and sometimes shot in poor light - under yellow tungsten light, for example - all of these details add to the immediacy of the book, carrying connotations of honesty and ‘realness’.
After the six sections dealing with particular times and places, the closing section of the book offers a wealth of useful (and unexpected in a cook book) information. In this section, Tilson reveals his love for ‘seductive’ food packaging, illustrating his thoughts with images of unusual and lovely packaging collected around the world. He also talks about recipe design: the history of recipe design; the typographical conventions of recipe designs; and the difference between annotating a recipe for a friend and for a cook book. There are some copyright-free posters to photocopy and distribute; a well-designed and easy to navigate index; a list of suppliers; a ‘bedtime reading’ list of books consulted during the writing of the book; an extensive ‘closing credits’ where Tilson reveals the design process, the typefaces, paper and photography used; and finally, acknowledgements.
There is a wealth of other detail presented throughout the book, too much to mention here, but some details that stand out are: the photographs of a well-stocked fridge and bowls of washing up that are hidden behind the cover flaps; the ‘may contain nuts’, ‘do not refrigerate’ and ‘keep in a cool dry place’ messages on the cover; and the use of small, almost missable motifs such as illustrations of tomatoes, scattered through the book. All of these elements work as signifiers and visual clues that contribute to the idiosyncratic feel of the book, established through design, that is a visual manifestation of Jake Tilson’s world.