Click here to view the cookbook.
- Maker: Merly Mesa
- Genre: Cookbook / Multi-page document
- Level: Graduate
- Program: Composition, Rhetoric, and Digital Media
- Course: WRIT 5800: Editing, Layout, and Design
- Instructor: Dr. Eric Mason
- Semester Created: Winter 2020
Description:
Prior to the Great Isolation of 2020, I started The Basically Guide to Better Baking, a 10-week challenge featuring 10 baking recipes designed to make you a better baker. To commemorate completion of the challenge, I decided to compile all 10 recipes (and a bonus one!) into a cookbook, using my own photos and editing the text (at times) to fit my preferred style and cut out some of the extra personality the Basically editors insert into theirs.
The cookbook is minimalistic in style, as this is my preferred aesthetic. Recipe titles and accents are written in Arial Bold. The ingredients and instructions are in a serif-font, Minion Pro, to make it easier to read.
Note: This does not reflect a ready-to-print document. It still requires final proofreading and editing.
Reflection:
This was a fun project to work on and was very challenging, as I had no prior experience with Adobe’s InDesign software. I consulted a lot of YouTube videos and online forums for learning things like how to create Master Pages and numbered pages. One of the great challenges of this project was getting the recipes to fit within 1-2 pages. Basically’s recipes are typically pretty long, because they don’t have to work within page restraints. They also include a lot of personality, and because this is a series meant to help you become a better baker there are extensive tips in every recipe. I had to do some extensive editing at times, based on my own experience in creating the recipes, as well as my prior experience in writing cookbook recipes.
This project also required me to create layouts on paper before I attempted anything within the program. I needed to ensure that I had the right amount of pages to create a book. I included the cover in this document, although typically the cover would be in its own file.
