Take a look behind the scenes of a collaboration to design a cookbook cover for the Bento Book. Caitlin Hottinger Design created 3 unique concepts for the cookbook cover design, utilizing illustration, type, and color in creative ways.
Concept 1 is bold, bright, and geometric. Product photography is the central visual element, framed by bold and blocky type. The color fields behind the food photography provide a dynamic ground for the focal point of photo and title.
Photography by Takenaka Bento Box
Concept 2 relies on illustration and the primary visual element. These illustrations of healthy foods and vegetables are large in scale, and frame the typography with the title in the center. The illustrations are colorful and resemble paper cutouts, which portray a youthful, approachable, and fun overall look.
Concept 3 is also an illustrative concept, but the scale, typography, and color palette are vastly different than in Concept 2. In this approach, food illustrations are arranged as a pattern that uniformly cover the cookbook cover. The type is a title case serif font, which has a much gentler and professional feel than the bold and blocky type in concepts one and two.
This collaboration was a fun exercise in exploring different ways to create a dynamic and eye-catching cookbook cover design, through visual elements such as food photography, food illustration, type and color, and by utilizing the design principals of scale, alignment, and positioning.
