THE GRAVY BOWL: Menus and Cookbook
For a typography course, we were challenged to create a visual language for a series of menus and a cookbook for a fictional restaurant. I chose to create a restaurant in my home city of St. Louis, based loosely on dishes made popular there. The food is hearty and heavy, including Midwestern classics such as toasted ravioli and gooey buttercake. The food is served in a gourmet setting, so in contrast to the food, the menus and aesthetic of restaurant was are light and vintage. Using flower etchings and sketches from the Spirit of St. Louis aircraft, I created watermarking and texture throughout each piece. To further this contrast, I used bold vintage typefaces to pull the hierarchy together on the menus and the throughout the book. In the book, I also brought in vintage images and stories of the history of St. Louis to tie in the vintage elements to the content of the book. This is one of the first books I had set on my own, and I was very pleased with the result of my work.
