Sculptors are only half-joking when they say that their job is to chip away at a block of rock to reveal the statue within. Publications have their ideal proportions, too, intending to refine the concept to find the essence for a successful project. That’s how producing a 16-page anniversary promotion for AURAS became an 80-page hardcover cookbook.
To commemorate our three decades, there was one thing I didn’t want—a promotion showing samples of our work. Who really wants to keep something like that? We wanted to make a fun promotion that people would keep and enjoy.
I have always loved cooking, reading cookbooks, learning about different cuisines, and discovering new cooking tools and techniques. Over the years, I developed my own “go-to” recipes. Most are comfort food standards, and some are restaurant menu staples but with a twist. Sharing these recipes and the stories behind them seemed like a promotion that would fit our theme: Cooking is like design—make something creative, execute it well, and people will appreciate it.
So, why not make a small booklet with a few recipes from AURAS Design’s Creative Director? It would be a perfect gift to promote the studio’s anniversary—and something people might want to keep. But, as I made a list of recipes that quickly reached 50 items, it looked like we were going to need a bigger book.
Plus, it was our 30th anniversary, and I felt we needed something more elaborate. We had made it through the Great Recession a little battered but still going strong. It was a time to celebrate. Producing a full-fledged cookbook, an adjacent website, and a branded food product would be a tremendous demonstration of AURAS’ capabilities.
We chose 30 entres (plus another 20 side dishes) and began to design a full-color hardcover book. I wrote down the ingredients and the instructions along with short side stories that explained why each recipe was a special treat, recommended the best ways to serve the food, and artisan products to enhance them.
The elegant design of the book demanded gorgeous full-page pictures. We needed a specialist in food photography, and I enlisted a friend, Renée Comet, to produce the images in her studio. I promoted the idea as a collaboration to show off her studio’s specialty and gave her leeway to compose the shots as she saw fit. She worked with food stylist Lisa Cherkasky to create the images. Although I am sure they have regular clients looking over their shoulder throughout their shoots, I tried to keep in the background when I watched them at work.
I enlisted some friends to help edit the book and a few foodies to make the recipes and comment on the preparation and results. Chief among them was my sister, Lynn Ann. Besides loving to cook, she had the largest collection of kitchen porn I have ever seen. Together, we made many recipes, adjusting the timing and ingredients to improve them. When you have been cooking these dishes as long as I have, committing the recipe to exact measurements and cook times was not easy. My mother had always said that she never followed a recipe, and I scoffed at her nonchalance. But I realized that I cooked in the same way. I was making well-worn recipes happened on autopilot, with visual and aromatic cues that replaced specific measurements. It proved that cooking and design really are similar. It takes skill, technique—and imagination.
Renée finished the photography in July 2011. The design and the production of the book were primarily completed by then. The cookbook shows our information design, publication design, writing, and print production skills. I prepared a short personal history of AURAS that you can, and, despite my dislike of showing our past work, we included a few pages of samples from 30 of our clients. Download a copy of Delicious by Design.
We held a launch party that November, and 200 friends, clients, and colleagues attended. It was the most people we have ever had in our studio at once. We prepared a dozen of the dishes from the book and gave everyone at the party a goodie bag with an autographed copy and a bottle of AURAS Spice Mix. It was the most elaborate event AURAS has ever thrown.
Completing and celebrating the challenging project of creating a cookbook full of original recipes accompanied by mouth-watering images, and knowing that countless people have prepared them during the last ten years has been a highlight of my life. The one melancholy note in the whole project was that my sister, who had contracted a rare pulmonary disease, passed away before she could hold a copy of the printed book. I dedicated it to her memory.
Who knows what we would have done for our 40th anniversary if it wasn’t for COVID-19. We did create another cookbook called Taste of the Decade. It has 370 recipes from 120 restaurants, collected over ten years from a charity tasting event that we donated the marketing. Download it and let me know what you think. If we could have had a party in our studio to celebrate, it might have been an even bigger event.
