English Food Jane Grigson

English Food

Jane Grigson

Published by Penguin Books, 1993 (Paperback)

Cover design by the Senate, photographs from The Anthony Blake Photo Library

I think that this paperback edition was originally printed at a larger size and possibly with wider margins and gutters; it feels very dense and in need of some white space to allow the text to breathe. The book is very busy with too may design elements that are attempting to create a hierarchy for the reader but end up creating confusion. Many of these design elements are unnecessary; the initial cap in Gill, for example that appears immediately below the title of the recipe, set in Gill Bold, creating a double emphasis - and with the first few words of the sentence in small caps, essentially a triple emphasis. Similarly, the drop cap reversed out of black is not only ugly and jarring, it is not necessary after the line space that precedes it. Other elements need more emphasis: the ‘For 6’ serving suggestion set in centred titlecase Gill is lost on the page and makes an ugly collision with the central gutter of the two column list of ingredients.

The cover of the book does an excellent job of establishing, through graphic design methods, not only the stature of the author as an important food writer but also an idea of the traditions and heritage of English food. It is a shame that the typography of the interior of the book makes the reading of the book such hard work.

Front cover

The cover is white with a narrow silver grey band down the left-hand side. There is a small photograph of a steamed pudding on a pewter raised cake stand accompanied by a dessert spoon with thick cream on it. The golden steamed pudding, glistening with a syrup sauce and topped with slices of apples signifies traditional English food evoking memories of childhood and the English love of puddings. The raised cake stand signifies that this is a special dish, the centrepiece of the table. The choice of an antique object - there is a patina of age and the bottom of the stand is bent out of shape - helps establish the atmosphere of tradition as does the choice of material - pewter which conjures up visions of Merrie England. The pudding and spoon have been cut out in Photoshop and a shadow added. The shadow does not suggest a realistic or naturalistic depth but rather that the image is flat and floating just above the surface of the book; combined with the fact that the spoon is out of scale with the size of the pudding, the resulting assemblage is very strange, almost surreal.

The photograph is a small detail, perhaps one sixth of the total cover. Below the photograph, taking up almost half of the cover is the author’s name and the title of the book, set loosely in titlecase Baskerville and arranged informally. The author’s surname is the dominant element, reflecting her stature as a revered food writer, it is printed in grey and fits the width of the cover; her first name is set in italic, printed in black at a much smaller size and placed just below and centred on the cake stand. The title of the book is set in a smaller size than the author’s name, printed in black and set on two lines. There is a quotation set in much smaller type than the other elements and, in the top left-hand corner, the Penguin logo.

Inside Pages

The book is 13 cm by 20 cm and is printed black on cream uncoated paper. The layout is based on a simple one-column grid: centred titlecase small caps in Gill bold are used for headings; an Old Style sans-serif is used for the justified body text; a heavier Old Style sans-serif is used for chapter headings, uppercase for the main chapters and in title case for other chapters. Chapters open on the recto page with the text beginning just below halfway down the page and the chapter heading a fifth of the page from the top. Initial caps in Gill bold and a line (of varying lengths) of text set in small caps are used to mark the start of sections within each chapter; the method section for each recipe is marked with a drop cap, in Gill, that is reversed out of a black square; running heads are set in titlecase Gill small caps; other elements include quotations and ingredients set in italic (the latter in two columns) and notes set in the Old Style sans-serif but at a smaller point size than the body text.