On Wednesday, I met with John for the first tutorial of the new term. I took along some A3 printouts of the How Did We Do? newspaper, the first time I had seen them printed. I am pleased with the results; the printouts are about slightly smaller than the size of the newspaper but, even at the reduced scale, the receipts (which had to be reduced by 90% to fit on the page) are still readable. The text (which is all the same size throughout) is a good size too, even on the cover, and the typographic hierarchy that I established, works better in print than on screen.
We talked a little about my intentions with the How Did We Do? project. My starting point was thinking about how receipts could be used to suggest recipes to supermarket customers, based on supermarkets' databases of information of food purchases. It would be very easy to print - on or with the receipt - recipe suggestions based on these purchases and to propose alternatives for the next shop, perhaps adding other ingredients that might be off the customer's 'radar'. I didn't think designing recipes to be printed on receipts had enough graphic design potential and, as John pointed out, is probably more to do with marketing, but I thought it was worth exploring the idea further.
I started to collect all the food shopping receipts and record everything that we ate - writing down recipes for the more interesting meals. I decided to use the newspaper format that I had used for Sunday Roast as I felt that the throwaway quality of the newspaper had much in common with the ephemerality of receipts; the 12 page format of the newspaper fixed the timespan of the project - one page for each week. My original intention had been to highlight the relationship between what we buy, what we make and what we eat. I think the project has succeeded in doing that, but it has also highlighted how my shopping, cooking and eating tends to fall into patterns of making the same food. It also revealed how often I shop at Tesco (and not, as I thought, at the local shops); how many dishes that I cook use tinned tomatoes; how many spicy dishes I cook; and, rather shamingly, how many pork pies I eat. John agreed that the project had worked well and had succeeded in showing not only the relationship between buying, cooking and eating but could also function as a guide to how to shop, how to cook and how to eat.
We talked a little bit more about my original interest in recipes which had always been about the conflict inherent in cook books: the tension between the functionalism of the instructional recipe and the more emotive design that makes explicit the authorial voice. Previously, John has talked about the branding of cook books, with particularly reference to celebrity cooks, and how the design of their books establishes that brand. I've been analysing the graphic language of cook books in my cookbookdesign blog to see exactly how the brand is established through graphic design.
Last week I was looking closely at Katharine Whitehorn's Cooking in a Bedsitter. I'm not sure that Katharine Whitehorn could be described as a celebrity cook - although she later became well-known, when the book was first published in 1961, she was relatively unknown; what is fascinating is how the authorial voice is established - in very unexpected ways - within the quite formal but flexible grid and typography of the standard Penguin paperback. Aside from the cover photograph, there are no illustrations in the book but Katharine Whitehorn's tone, established within the text, is amplified by the typography which pitches ranged left oversized italics against a more formal centred and justified typography to create an irreverent and playful tone which still manages to suggest authority (we can trust the recipes) and, to some extent, aspiration (despite cooking on one ring, some of the recipes are quite sophisticated with Whitehorn herself admitting a debt to Elizabeth David). John called this conflict between information and emotions, mediated through graphic design, a struggle for 'hearts and minds'.
We talked about what my outcome would be for the major project. We keep coming back to the question that John asked me at our first meeting: What will your outcome be - will it be just a book with photos of food and some nice type? We've established that although this is a seductive option, the major project demands something more. My criticisms of many contemporary cook books is that they have become aspirational coffee table books, beautifully designed with special papers, fantastic photos and wonderful design but they have become about looking not cooking. I am researching how graphic design can inspire people to cook without becoming a 'book with photos of food and some nice type'. The disposability of the newspaper, which I have used for two projects, seems to suggest the opposite of a 'trophy' coffee table book. However, despite the disposability of the medium, I hope that my type is 'nice' as well as being functional and serving a purpose.
I've been thinking about how I might develop a series of newspapers for my outcome: How Did We Do? is ready go to print soon; Roast is already printed and could be expanded into a series of different roasts - lamb, chicken, pork etc; I've been trying to find contributions to my project about communal eating which I imagined as a newspaper; and I've also been reading about food history which might make another. I need to think a bit more about how (and if) these different projects could exist as a series and whether this might involve a unified design. John suggested that the design already had a unity because they had been designed by me and shared my 'handwriting'. The standard format of the newspaper will further unite them.
I had some encouraging feedback from Paul about my recent projects. He suggested that 'there's something a little zen-like or tea ceremonial about them, slowed down, sensitised. Maybe that would be good to develop – descriptions of very simple, pure processes in corresponding typography.' Thinking again about John's comments about 'hearts and minds', and also looking at the typography in Cooking in a Bedsitter, I'm wondering whether I need to think a little bit more about the relationship between word and type in the project.
I recently spent some time with James Langdon and had some interesting conversations about the atmosphere of different typefaces - he gave me a great quote from Karel Martens who had said (I'm paraphrasing here) that he liked imperfect design because content is not perfect and it was a reminder of the author's voice when he was reading. We both had looked at Replica by Norm; we agreed that it worked really well as continuous text where the quirks were still apparent but the more awkward elements were ironed out and the text on the page took on the look a photocopy or ink that had spread. James told me that his first priority in making a design is to find a suitable typeface, I found this intriguing - I tend to work intensively with the same typeface, exhausting the possibilities of what it can do. In a similar manner, it might be interesting to push the newspaper format as far as it will go, exhausting the possibilities.
On Wednesday, after my tutorial, I had some good chats with fellow students at LCC. It was great to catch up with everyone and find out what people had been up to. It was interesting to talk to Steve who has been looking at the character of typefaces, covering similar ground to myself. It's so personal to try and talk about a typeface, and, if you ask someone why they chose a particular typeface, the reply is generally 'because I like it'. Having conversations with people who are trying to articulate more than this response, who are trying to articulate the tone or atmosphere of a typeface was really inspiring. I'm going to spend some time thinking again about type and typography as a way of moving forward with the project.