Cookbook Design

A few years ago, someone approached me to redesign a cookbook she had made back in 1999, which needed a refresh. I had never done something like this, so I started looking through my own cookbooks for inspiration. After I blew off all the dust, of course.

Cookbooks have a pretty standard layout. There’s not a ton of options, creatively, to work with. They usually have a picture of the meal, followed by a description or story, then the ingredients and actual instructions.

The first step was to load all the content. This proved to be more work than I had expected, because the original was in some weird file format. Copy and paste didn’t work because it kept importing things like the paragraph symbol. So I ended up typing it all up manually. On the plus side, I didn’t have any images of the food to deal with.

With the content loaded, what could I do that was unique? I added a cooking pot, under the page number. I thought that was neat.

The book was in sections, and somehow, I came up with the idea of each section having silverware next to the title. So the Appetizers had a spoon and a fork, the meat had a fork and a knife, etc. Each recipe in that section would have the same silverware, so you’d know which section you were in.

Lastly, I setup page links in the PDF. This took me FOREVER. See, I was using Scribus on Linux with the PDF set to scroll vertically. For some reason, when I clicked on a link, it would take me to the bottom of the page (which would like like the top of the next page). However, that same file on Windows would work perfectly. That took me entirely way too long to figure out. It was worth it, however, because not only did I learn how to add links, but it also made the cookbook easier to use digitally.

The client was happy and got rave reviews when she presented it to her friends. With permission, you can download a free copy here.