Background

In the spring of 2019, I finally read a book that my dad had been talking about for weeks. The book, Grain Brain by Dr. David Perlmutter, explores the relationship that diet has on the gut and the brain. As both a neurologist and a licensed nutritionist, he presents evidence that our standard carbohydrate-heavy diets are harming our brains via inflammation, leading to an array of degenerative illnesses. My dad was interested in this because diabetes runs in his family, and if he was to adjust to this new diet over time, he could avoid the deadly disease.

The diet that Dr. Perlmutter recommends—no sugar, very few carbohydrates, tons of fat, medium amount of protein, and lots of veggies—switches your body over from burning carbohydrates, to burning fat. That process is called ketosis, and it's why it is known as the keto diet.
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It's not for everyone; you have to cut out bread, pasta, beer, soda, cereal, cookies, crackers, chips, oatmeal, potatoes, sweet potatoes, rice, beans, lentils, and almost all fruit. At this point, someone usually say "uhh... potatoes? beans? fruit?? no thanks," and I don't blame them. But the keto diet is not meant for everyone, it's meant for people with specific health conditions who would benefit from nutritional ketosis.

I thought that I could benefit from going keto, and tried it for a few weeks. While I did feel better, it was too restrictive, and wasn't a sustainable option for me. It's expensive (nuts, meat, and fatty dairy are $$$), and the process of switching my body into ketosis (or the price of a cheat day) meant I spent a couple of days feeling nauseous. Plus, I had a dream about buttered toast.

While I didn't end up continuing the keto diet, my excitement about a new way of eating meant I collected a trove of new recipes. It was while sorting through all these recipes that I realized the standard recipe format—ingredients, then directions—meant switching back and forth between the two. You shouldn't have to keep finding and refocusing on your current recipe step amid the busy, usually time-sensitive cooking process.

I started noodling around with fonts and weights, and eventually created, then expanded, on a new format.

Process

I began by playing around with Univers, my favorite typeface. Specifically, I started looking at the contrast between the condensed and extended fonts. Extended and bold worked for the ingredients, which needed to stand out amid the directions, which were roman and condensed.

This font combination worked to both make it easier to read, and to visually communicate how the dish is made. When reading through a recipe, it's easy to recognize patterns. Bolded ingredient lists signify adding a lot of ingredients at once, while ingredients interspersed in different steps show a methodical process of specify actions. You can visually pace out the recipe before you even start.

At this point, I was only working the recipes that were on Dr. Perlmutter's website. All of the recipes were for one serving, and they all came from the same source. I did lightly edit the recipes for brevity, but didn't change anything important.

I did notice that I needed to make rules for the ingredients font. I didn't like the line breaks in ingredients, like above in step 5 (where '1' and 'T water' are separated). The new rule became that the ingredient has to be all on one line, where possible. Sometimes, an ingredient can include a few descriptors (diced, peeled, melted, chopped), so it's best to have a flexible system.

For the steps that introduce multiple ingredients, I realized I had to differentiate between adding all the items at the same time (first example below), versus specific actions for each item (second example).

So for 3 or more items added at the same time, I would create a list, with each ingredient on its own line. (The example below also features the double-yikes of a poorly hyphenated word and an ingredient linebreak).

As I formatted more recipes, I began collecting them from different sources, like keto recipe subreddits and food blogs. Each of these new recipes contained new and different pieces of information. Some included the macros—total calories, and grams of fat, carbs, and proteins—and some included prep time and/or total time. As a result, I needed to evolve my design system to account for all these different pieces of information.

Beneath the recipe title, I created a line for the yield, prep time, and cook time. The category titles (yield, prep, cook) were in a smaller, all-caps, light font, with the category information (6 servings, 10 min, 45 min) in a slightly bigger roman font. Decorative bullets separated the categories, each with an em space on either side.

I also added a space below the recipe for the nutrition information and the source. The nutrition per serving featured total calories, and grams of fat, net carbs, and proteins, with the numbers in bold. (Net carbs = total carbs - grams of fiber... that's why veggies have carbs but are so healthy).

The source, in a light gray color and smaller size, features the title and the website URL. If the source is from Reddit, the post title is followed by the subreddit, and the username of the poster. (See example below.)

The last addition to my design system was the subtitle. Some recipes have multiple parts. In the example of "Lemon Poppyseed Muffins with Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting," you make both the muffins and the frosting. The subtitle is bold, condensed, and oblique, and a few sizes bigger than the ingredient/direction text. I wanted it to be clearly different from the bolded ingredients font.

Final Outcome

My time actually cooking with these recipes was short and sweet, but I did create my own recipe book. I had formatted the pages to be three-hole-punched and kept in a binder. However, as I started using the recipe book, I realized the format was too limiting. I wanted to be able to see all the recipes at once, to plan out multiple meals. The pages in the binder were double-sided, but that meant I couldn't plan with any of the recipes. The format was geared towards the act of cooking, rather than the process of planning that a new diet required.

I tweaked the recipes into a new compact format, to print out three recipes on one piece of printer paper. They weren't organized by category (like breakfast, salads, chicken, baked goods, etc), but by space. I combined whatever fit together to maximize printing space.

However, I ran into a snag: some recipes didn't fit in one column. To keep everything cohesive with the single-column the print-outs, I turned the recipe into a single-column format (rather than the title stretching across two columns), and printed two columns, to be folded it in half.

Reflection + Critique

I love typography, problem-solving, and food, so this project was the best of all three. While I didn't actually continue to use the recipes I formatted, I'm still proud of the new format I created. I think it works well, and it isn't difficult for someone else to understand. Moving forward, I'd love to combine this new format with my own recipes. I love to cook, and I'd love to release a whole series of newly formatted, personal recipes. Maybe something like "Best Hits of Quarantine, a.k.a. Life With No Takeout."

I know this format isn't perfect. There is the question of not being able to see all the ingredients at once; people are used to looking at the ingredient list to see what they need. I don't think it's necessary to have all the ingredients listed separately just for the ease of prep, when the act of cooking is the more important aspect. The combined recipe format might not present all the ingredients separately, but you can (easily) read through the recipe to see what you need. You should be reading through the whole recipe, anyways. Having to read through the recipe to parse out the ingredients shouldn't outweigh the much easier time you time you spend actually cooking.

Lastly, since this was my personal project, it's definitely skewed towards me and my skill level. I love cooking, and I grew up watching the Food Network, so I'm pretty familiar with techniques and flavor combinations in the kitchen. If I was marketing this to other people, I would do some research with how comfortable people were with the terminology and techniques mentioned. I think a colorful graphic highlighting the "good" and "bad" foods for a keto diet, After separating into carbs, fats, and proteins, I would introduce different spice combinations, and build the flavor relationships from there.