I've started my visual audit of cook books. I'm not sure whether I have a watertight methodology: my descriptions of the books are probably too subjective. I'm trying to articulate what message - I think - the design of each book is transmitting. Messages of course, depend on context: I wonder whether I'm projecting my ideas onto the books based on what I know about the authors of the books. I've been looking at Nigel Slater's books - even just looking at the hierarchy of information on the covers, it is possible to spot the shift in Nigel Slater's career as he moves from a newspaper column to becoming a known face on television.
In a wider sense, my aims for this project are to look at the shift that has happened in cook books where, in my opinion, books have become about looking and not about cooking. Books have replaced, to some extent, art books as signifiers of taste - this shift is exemplified by Phaidon's move to publishing cook books as well as art books, starting with The Silver Spoon in 2005. I want to show the development of high production values - normally associated with art books - in cook books as an indicator to the change in value given to cook books. This use of high production values (full colour printing, tactile paper stocks, interesting bindings, marker ribbons, embossed covers etc) is possibly connected to the availability of cheaper printing and is lead by marketing; I am interested in analysing how these details add value to a book and why these details are added to cook books. For example, if cook books are meant to be used in a kitchen and given that kitchens tend to get messy, why are so many recent cook books (Jamie's Italy, Nigel Slater's The Kitchen Diaries etc) printed on uncoated paper rather than the more practical wipe-clean coated papers?
I am re-reading Sean Hall's excellent introduction to semiotics This Means This This Means That (1) as a way of framing my writing about cook books within the audit. I am conscious, however, that from the start, despite my concerns about my methodology being watertight, I want this audit to be accessible and readable: I want my analysis to be more than a list of which cook books use serif typefaces and which use sans-serifs and that increases my design language in both senses: practical and theoretical. My intention in doing an MA is to understand why I make design decisions and to be able to articulate more clearly those decisions; I hope that with a rigourous written analysis of the design of cook books, I will be able to articulate the signs within and the messages that the design is transmitting.
(1) Hall, Sean (2007) This Means This, That Means That: A User's Guide to Semiotics, London, Laurence King
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Context
My research in Unit 2.3 Design and Rhetoric focused on language, in particular the relationship between speech, writing and typography. I researched the idea of typography as a faulty transmitter, a language at one remove from writing, which, in turn, is a language at one remove from speech. Informed by the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure’s concepts of linguistics and semiotics, I am interested in how thought is mediated through writing and how ideas are disseminated through print.
My research looked at how meaning might be – if not fixed – then amplified by typography. I researched the ways in which designers use typography to direct or control the reading of a text. I was particularly interested in the construction of hierarchy using typography and how these interventions might be used to control, direct or manipulate the reader. I realised that, in terms of my outcome for the Major Project Proposal my work was lacking in focus. During the course of the study period, the focus of my research shifted: from work that attempted to amplify the authorial voice to work that also examined typographic hierarchy. I needed to find a focus for the project and a set of materials that I could use as a testing ground. I arrived at the idea of cookery books as a useful – and accesible – vehicle on which I could hang the ideas that I had been exploring.
One of the main reasons for picking recipe / cook books as an area of research is that I’m interested in the dichotomy between modernism and post-modernism, the push and pull between rationalisation and expressiveness. Cook books are an ideal vehicle because you have recipes that can be rationalised with typographic hierarchy, combined with the authorial voice or tone which can be presented in a more expressive way. My research will look at how Modernism informs the typographic hierarchy and layout of recipes and how the graphic language of cook books is created through graphic design.
My work for Design and Rhetoric had looked at how typography could intervene in a text, directing and controlling the reading of it. To inform my understanding of the relationship between language, writing and typography, I was reading texts such as Orality and Literacy by Walter J Ong. I was using these texts to make work that explored these ideas. This became problematic for two reasons: the work became too self-referential, a closed circle; I also realised that I was only scratching the surface of the texts that I was reading.
Without an in-depth understanding and comprehension of the context of the texts I was reading there was a danger that my attempts to amplify the meaning within those texts would remain superficial. I had also found that working with these texts made it difficult for my peer group to make constructive crtiticism about my work, without reading the texts themselves. I felt that recipe books offered a more accesible research subject, one which I have a previous knowledge of, and that would be fun and enlightening to pursue. In addition, I think my findings will have more relevance to other genres of book publishing than my previous research focus.
One of my main objectives of doing the MA is to better understand why I make design decisions and why I am drawn to certain styles of design. This research question will enable me to comprehend those decisions; it will expand my knowledge of design and enable me to articulate more clearly the thinking behind my design decisions.
This project will use my initial research into the relationship between language, text and typography to survey the typography of recipe/cookery books but will also be a platform for thinking about graphic design in the wider sphere of book design.
Recipe Books
The recipe / cook book exists on many different levels: as lists of recipes; as historical document; as reflections on food; as distillation of lifestyle; as propaganda; as autobiography. Recipes are presented in numerous ways that reflect the diversity of approaches to typographic hierarchy: as simple lists of ingredients; as sets of instructions; as diagrams; as sequential photographs; as continuous text; as bullet-pointed lists of instructions; as numbered lists of instructions; as conversations. How this information is presented will be the primary focus of a visual audit that will unpick the various typographic means that hierarchy is created within the convention of the recipe (recipes generally consist of a list of ingredients, sometimes a list of equipment, a set of oven temperatures and cooking times, a set of instructions and a set of timings for preparation and cooking).
A second focus of the visual audit will be the graphic language of recipe / cook books: how the authorial voice is created and amplified through typography, photography and graphic design.
Cook books exist on many different socio-political levels: in the seventeenth century recipe or receipt books contained a sometimes queasy mix of culinary and medical recipes; they can be political – wartime cook books as issued by the Ministry of Food are a kind of propaganda, vegetarian cook books can be positioned within the wider sphere of alternative anti-establishment lifestyles that emerged in the 1960s; cook books can be instructional in the forms of kitchen bibles aimed largely at women setting up home; they can exist as historical documents, reflecting the changes in eating habits for example the interest in Mediterranean food that coincided with the rise of air travel; they can also be aspirational, reflecting an idealised lifestyle as presented through food.
Traditionally, most domestic cook books have been aimed at women, as it is women who have traditionally maintained the home; cook books reflect the contemporary shift in domestic arrangements where (some) men now share the cooking.
Some cook books are aimed at professional chefs but I intend to concentrate on books that are aimed at the home cook. There are many different categories of cook books that are aimed for the home or amateur cook: kitchen bibles are basic reference books that include all types of cooking and sometimes home management (Delia Smith’s Complete Cookery Course); some are linked to restaurants (The Moro Cookbook); others to professional chefs (Gordon Ramsay); some are linked to television or newspaper columns (Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson and Nigel Slater); ethnic or international cook books look at cooking from other cultures (The Silver Spoon and Madhur Jaffrey); other books look at single subjects - a specific ingredient, technique, or class of dishes (The River Cottage Fish Book); some are about food history (Marguerite Patten’s Century of British Cooking).
The history of recipe / cook books is rich and extensive. A historical survey of cook books will be useful for contextualising my findings. I will need to narrow my focus: I have a large selection of books from the past fifty years (some of them illustrated here) but I think it may be wiser to limit my visual audit to books produced within the last twenty years as they will reflect the surge of interest in both cooking and books about cooking. As well as my own collection of books I will be able to draw on the books owned by my friends and from fellow students at LCC. Libraries will be another source of research material.
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