River Cafe Cook Book Easy
Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers
Published by Ebury Press, 2003 (Hardback)
Design by the Senate
Designer David Eldridge
Artworker Marisa Sebastian
Photography by Martyn Thompson
Additional photographers Jeremy Hudson, Gary Calton, Peter Drinkle
The design of the book is simple and understated design but, in places, is clumsy and unresolved: the splitting of ingredients and quantities is hard to read and the line length of the authors’ commentary is too long and the linespacing, to my taste, too wide. This is the fifth River Cafe cook book, it uses a similar design to the first book but, unlike the first book, which was based on the sans-serif typeface FF Meta, this book uses FF DIN, designed by Albert-Jan Pool in 1995, and a popular typeface amongst designers and architects. FF DIN (an acronym forDeutsches Institut für Normung [German Institute for Standardisation]) carries with it connotations of functionalism and industry, a fitting choice for a book about a restaurant that was originally the canteen for Richard Rogers’ architectural practice and now attracts a generally design literate clientele. The recipes in this book are simple and are aimed for the domestic cook - the functional clarity of FF DIN carries this message and, with the designers’ use of colour, adds an element of childlike playfulness which stops the typography - and the design - from looking too austere.
The photographs in the book also promote this idea of simplicity. Although sharing the same over-riding aesthetic there are three kinds of photographs in the book: photographs of finished food presented in a ‘naturalistic’ manner that allows the reader to imagine not only eating the dish but preparing and cooking it; photographs of food being cooked that allow the reader to engaging in the process of cooking; and, to my mind, more problematically, photographs that present food as still-life, as something to be looked at, an aesthetic experience.
Like the first River Cafe cook book, there are some elements in the book that appear too self-consciously ‘designed’ and which lose sight of their function: the coloured numbering system for recipes is a good example. Here the designers have set up a grid for the opening pages of each section which lists the dishes in that section under a large numeral which is also printed in one of six colours. Although these pages look good - FF DIN numerals are particularly appealing, especially when scaled up - and the design echoes the ‘logo’ on the cover, they do not function for several reasons: they are not distinct enough to make a break between sections; the colours are arbitrary when the conventions of most cook books is to colour code according to type of food; the numbers refer to the position within the section whereas most readers would assume that the number referred to the page that the recipe is found on. A further level of confusion is added by the fact that the numerals on the recipe pages, despite being one of the dominant elements on the page, are somehow, not quite dominant enough; the relationship between them and the numbers on the opening pages is not explicit and, even when the reader has worked out what they stand for, their functionality is still debatable.
In spite of these flaws, which are largely to do with the internal organisation and navigation of the book, the book has an air of functionality and the recipes, which are simply written, are presented in a simple manner that is easy to follow while cooking. When combined with photographs that show the process of cooking and the finished dish, the result is a book that entices the reader to cook and eat.
Front cover
The cover is typographic: the title of the book dominates the cover, it is set in uppercase FF DIN black and is printed in six bright colours - orange, yellow, red, pink, green and cyan blue - on a gloss metallic silver background. The title is set over five lines, one word per line and is justified, filling almost all of the cover, with narrow margins at the top and bottom and wider margins at left and right. The authors’ names are printed in white, centred, between the words ‘cook’ and ‘book’, in title case FF DIN black; the names are set much smaller than the title of the book, roughly half the width of the cover; against the reflective silver, the names become almost invisible suggesting that the name of the restaurant is more important than the names of the authors.
The cover design follows the layout of the previous River Cafe books, a layout that exists as a kind of highly-recognisable logo for the series of books - although this cover, with its use of FF DIN bold is unlike previous covers which have used the typeface FF Meta. The first River Cafe cook book included the word ‘The’ in front of ‘River Cafe’ which created uneven spacing when the word was justified with awkward gaps between letters, exacerbated by the use of FF Meta; this cover is much more successful and pleasing to the eye. As with the previous covers, when viewed at a distance, or when seen as a thumbnail on a website, the arrangement of the words of the title becomes a logo that establishes the River Cafe brand. The logo of the River Cafe itself, a continuous line suggesting both the fluidity of water and hand-written menus appears on the opening pages, in white, reversed out of ultramarine blue.
The cover is very eye-catching: the glossy metallic silver reflects the light suggesting the play of light on water and the rainbow of colours are pleasing to the eye and also signify simplicity with their connotations of children’s paintboxes. Beneath the dustjacket, the cover boards are bound in a metallic purple bookcloth with endpapers in a vivid yellow. The title page is particularly pleasing with the title and authors’ names set in lowercase multi-coloured FF DIN bold setting up connotations of magnetic fridge letters. Child-like colours, the simplicity of FF DIN and copious white space are repeated throughout the book; these understated design elements help convey the idea that this is a book with recipes that are simple and easy to follow but, paradoxically, the sophistication of the design appeals to a very specific audience with a knowledge of design.
Inside Pages
The book is 19 cm by 24.5 cm, printed full colour on white uncoated paper. The layout has a clean, crisp simplicity, it is based on a two-column grid with a narrow outside margin, a wider inside margin, a deep top margin containing running heads, and a narrower bottom margin containing pagination: the left-hand column is narrower and contains ingredients; the right-hand column is wider and contains the method. Recipes are ranged left; the authors’ commentary is ranged left across the width of the two columns; ingredients are ranged left with the quantities ranged right - a rather inelegant solution which results in awkward gaps between ingredients and quantities.
The book has been designed with a typographic hierarchy that uses three weights of FF DIN, set in different sizes and in colours to order the various kinds of information in the book. Recipes are set in three sizes of DIN: titles are set in regular, printed in purple; ingredients, set in light, are set slightly smaller, also printed in purple; the method is set in light, printed in black. Running heads are set in titlecase FF DIN - they are printed in purple and are aligned to the outside and top margin; pagination, set in FF DIN, is aligned to the outside and bottom margin. Further elements on the page include the authors’ commentary which is set in Excelsior and printed in orange; and a FF DIN bold numeral, printed in different, random colours; the number refers to a - somewhat confusing - numbering system set up in the opening sections.
The book is divided into sections that deal with very specific types of Italian food: Bruschetta, Antipasti, Carpaccio, Spaghetti, Short pasta, Tagliatelle etc. Each section opens on the recto: the title of the section appears in grey at the bottom right-hand corner of the page, set in bold FF DIN; above, aligned to the top margin, are large numerals in random colours, similar to the ones on the cover, set in bold FF DIN - underneath these numerals, in the same colours and set in titlecase regular FF DIN are the recipe titles. The layout of these pages is such that the maximum number of recipes that can fit on a page is sixteen - when sixteen multi-coloured recipes appear on the page they create a strong echo of the cover of the book. One section (Bruschetta) has twenty-four recipes: the opening pages for this section and the pages that follow are given a different treatment.
Unlike the first River Cafe cook book which used bold colour in a variety of ways, including coloured pages, in this book, colour is largely kept to the typography and, of course, to the photographs. The book makes use of lots of white space, which, without the interjections of colour in the type and images, could appear too austere and antiseptic but instead feels crisp, modern and user friendly.
Colour photography is used to illustrate the finished dishes and sometimes to demonstrate techniques such as making gnocchi. Photographs generally appear on the recto and are shown full bleed - though there are exceptions: double page spreads and pages with multiple images. The food is photographed close-up and generally square on, from above. Most of the photographs are bright and crisp and appear to have been shot in a cold diffused daylight with few shadows - this matches the use of white space in the book. The colours of the photographs could be described as ‘naturalistic’ - though as in most cook books, the reds, greens and warm yellows of the dishes tend to be emphasised. Some dishes are photographed extremely close-up with very little background appearing. Serving dishes, cooking pots and crockery are generally utilitarian - white or plain colours, stainless steel and wood.
In general the food is presented with very little food styling (other than, I would imagine, the basics that are necessary for food photography) this gives the images an immediacy, a sense that it has just been cooked and also transmits the idea that this is food that is easy to cook because it is easy for the reader to imagine the food turning out as it is pictured. The finished dish is usually the focus of the photograph with very little else in view, however, in places, the food is presented with the ingredients that make up the dish as part of a still-life; I would argue that these photographs are less successful because they aestheticise the process of cooking, reducing it to an image to be looked at. Elsewhere, particularly in the section on meat, there are photographs that show dishes being cooked: quails being stuffed with sage; chops being grilled; and rare steak resting on a wooden board, these images work better because, like the photographs of finished dishes which invite the reader to imagine eating, they allow the reader to imagine themselves cooking the dish.
