Research

Primary research                        Ingredients                  Artist: Peter Grundy

To collate my primary research I baked a flapjack and took photos along the way of each stage of the baking process. These and images from the internet help with the initial design ideas as I have visual representation of each stage of the recipe. I have researched an artist that I am fond of to take inspiration from. Peter Grundy has a simplistic and structured design to his artwork that I think corresponds well to this project because the idea is to display a recipe, clearly, without the use of words.

Design Ideas

I have experiemented with all three formats; 3:1, 2:1, 1:1. I have tried to incorporate different styles, colour palettes and perspective. The first page consists of different layouts and colours. The first design on the second page is inspired by a comic book design, with its boxed in drawings of each stage and big, instructive arrows. The remaining two designs on page two are inspired by Peter Grundy's work. 

Developments

Idea 1

The first design I have developed is the pink 1:3 of the first page of design ideas. To start I took each element of the design and developed them seperately, so I drew out a few designs for each and then I picked one of them so that I could develop the whole piece together. I redrew the designs that i had picked so that I could photograph them and put them into Adobe Illustrator to be drawn up digitally. 

On Illustrator I drew out each developed image and played around with colours and placement. The first one has very muted colours, for the second I brightened up the colours to make the overall piece more vibrant and bold, I think this makes it look more instructive to the viewer. I changed the background colour quite a bit to try and find one that would make the design stand out and not just blend in and fade into the background. I also added to the design with a magifying glass over the temperature on the oven as it was too hard to see it without a close up view of it. The image of the pan on the stove is a close up, over-head view of the stove on the oven. I realised that I need to convey this more effectively so I added "beam of light" cast from the heated circle on the oven to the pan. The oven comes first in this design because it needs to be preheated and the ingredients need melted on the stove, so to avoid repeating the oven image I decided to incorporate an arrow to show that it needs to be put into the oven.

Idea 2

The second idea I developed was the tree design inspired by Peter Grundy's work. In the first one I made the tree look slightly more realistic and added the roots coming from the open oven, where the flapjack will fall into. In the second design I used flames to represent the oven, which will be created by taking photos of flames myself. The tree is also made from the flames and there is a thermometer to identify the temperature. In the third one I broke up the structure of the tree and again used flames to signify the oven. In the fourth design I mirrored the tree and the bottom tree is in the flames, which is where the flapjack will fall. The last image is the start of a draw up of the fourth design.

Further developments

I experimented with texture for the further develeopments of this idea. I changed the background colours and textures to find one that fit well with my design. I added effects to the different elements to help them become more 3D, along with shadows. 

I narrowed it down to these final two designs. I decided on the wooden background as it makes more sense and allows the images to stand out better.

Final