Cookaholics Bulletin Board

So I borrowed Savory Baking, by Mary Cech, from the SFPL. Ms. Cech put a bunch of effort into this cookbook, coming up with a selection of unusual and varied savory breads, pastries, and crumbles. To give you an idea how original, there's only one pizza recipe in the whole book.

Which is why its a shame that Chronicle's designer destroyed the book.

The designer is a typeface junkie. Each recipe is written in four different types. To make things worse, the ingredients are in a razor-thin, broadly kerned typeface in brown. I needed bright direct light to read them at all, and even so I kept missing stuff. I gave up on cooking from it, and am returning the book.

Have you encountered otherwise good cookbooks which were "designed to death"?

I agree, Fuzzy. A friend had it on the coffee table, and of course, I had to pick it up! I found the text annoying to read, and asked her if she also felt this way, and she told me she did, and wss returning the book as a result. So you're not alone.

It wasn't designed to death, and the contents more than makeup for the flaw, but Joanne Chang's Flour cookbook has most of the recipe text in a thin font that's brown and I have trouble seeing it clearly unless in really bright light. Maybe the people designing cookbooks these days are all under 30 and have no clue what happens to vision as a person ages? Or else they value funky creativity way more than they do practical yet appealing design? Probably both.

Emilie

I remember the Gourmet cookbook that came out several years ago - everything was in bright yellow and it really hurt to read it.

Well, one reason is because designer compensation has plummeted, just like every other kind of compensation in publishing. Since the designers aren't being paid very much, they're more interested in pleasing themselves than the book's audience.

The "horrible typefaces" thing I blame more on Apple though. A lot of the Apple marketing stuff uses terrible, unreadable typefaces, and as a rule designers are Apple fanboyz.

Josh,

Fess up...you simply hate Apple.

Amy

Amy,

Yep! I especially hate how they have this huge, unwarranted reputation for good design and good UI, while actually producing indifferent design and terrible UI (their reputation for good marketing is, however, warranted).

Mind you, I also hate Cisco, Dell, HP, Amazon and Google for various different reasons. Just call me "silicon valley curmudgeon".

It's all Steve Jobs' calligraphy teacher's fault.

It's not that Apple's design is so good, it is that their competitors are so very very awful. The bar is low.

Paul,

Point ...