Our first project for MDES – Grad Studio was designed to be an introduction to our classmates by assigning pairs of students to develop “gifts” for one another.
My Partner was Mayura C, a fellow Communication Design Alumni from Emily Carr. We had a chance to get to know each other, prompting the initial research for the work. After our discussion, the main idea I was hoping to move forward with was how Mayura has lived in the lower mainland for some time but hasn’t explored much of it.
When I think about how my family shows guests a good time around Vancouver, the typical trips to nature walks, hikes, and Whistler always come up. However, my favourite part about having guests in town is being able to Host them at my home, and my family shares the sentiment. We really enjoying being able to cook and trying new recipes from a variety of cultures.
For Mayura, we put together a Chicken Curry recipe that my Mom has been making for years. After having my Mom involved in putting together the recipe and process, we worked through some imagery to put together a recipe card to present to Mayura.
Instead of taking an image of the dish we chose to represent a more colourful part of the process by capturing our family’s spice container. To add a visual cue into the process, we loaded each of the spoons within the container with the rough amount of that specific spice needed in the dish.
Carrying forward to the actual recipe card, there were two main ideas for typography. The first was to use hand written text, scanning it in and cleaning it up for titles and headers.
The second was focused on using a specific set of typefaces. For the versions with actual typography, we went with a font that was used on in a previous project earlier this year, which my Mom had consulted me for (essentially, the font she liked best).
It was exciting to use the kitchen counter as the background as it was the best way to bring the viewer into our home and added a subtle texture throughout the piece.