This cookbook represents the first inter-department fine art book collaboration. The Department of Art & Design partnered with the Culinary Arts Institute to showcase strengths of both departments. Amazing food, beautiful photography and graphic design, combined into one elegant presentation.
Courtney Garcia
John Rees
Coco Berryessa
Starting in 2014, an academic experiment began to conduct a multi-disciplinary collaboration between faculty and students in the Art & Design Department at Utah Valley University. Our end goal has been to create fine art coffee table books that showcase the creativity, innovation, and ingenuity of our department. In the Art & Design Book Series, we have published five books with a sixth scheduled for publication in 2022.
J’adore is a new addition to the original series and will bring our total book count to seven. We wanted to broaden the scope of our multi-disciplinary efforts and reached out with a proposal to collaborate with the Culinary Arts Institute in the College of Engineering and Technology. We are glad they consented.
We don’t intend these projects and resulting books to just be an educational exercise. We expect them to result in professional level experience and publications that put students on equal footing with their soon to be professional counterparts. Each prior book has received recognition in state, regional and national competitions from organizations such as Independent Publishers Book Awards, PPI PrintROCKS!, DesignArts Utah, AIGA 100, and PRINT magazine.
The photography component of this cookbook was principally created in two classes. The first class was taught by John Rees who worked with Chef Todd to create the masterful shots of the plated food that fill the pages of this cookbook. The second class was taught by Trent Bates and focused on creating images that could be used by the design team to supplement the plated dishes. The graphic design team consisted of a class of sixteen students and was taught by Gareth Fry. The students worked to find styles and fonts they felt best reflected the culinary tradition inherent in the recipes. Several design options were created and presented to Chef Todd where he selected a design created by Sierra Lawrence. Her design created the style guide for this book. Her fingerprint can be found everywhere in this book. Another student, Kirill Solomein, created the design used for the front cover. All of the design students contributed heavily to the final design.
Coco Berryessa was one of the student photographers who really excelled in photographing food and after the classes ended, was instrumental in getting the rest of the recipes photographed. Coco also masterfully reviewed, color corrected, and/or edited every picture in the entire cookbook. The final design and production of the book was completed by Melissa Jane Barrett, the lead graphic designer for the School of the Arts. Melissa took all the incredible design and photography from students and faculty and began the Herculean task of editing and designing the final masterpiece you see before you. Travis Lovell, who is one of the co-directors for the Art & Design Book Series, stepped in as the faculty member to help where needed, to ensure the project was successfully completed.
This cookbook truly was a team effort, with all the contributions being invaluable pieces to the overall success of the project.
