Tackling the monster that is Adobe InDesign.
COURSe
GRC 318: Digital Typography
When
Winter 2025
Location
San Luis Obispo, CA
Overview
For a Digital Typography course, I turned one of my favorite recipes into a printed recipe book, combining original photography with the layout and typography skills I was learning in Adobe InDesign. I was so excited to bring my hobby of digital photography into a class project. It helped make the book feel personal from the start, and a chance to create something I could share with the people closest to me.
Process
I started in the kitchen, preparing the recipe and taking photographs of both the ingredients and throughout the cooking process. In InDesign, I applied layout design, margins, and the column rules to give the pages structure. I worked on balancing the photography with the recipe text, thinking about how someone would move through the book and follow each step.
Typography research helped me choose a direction that matched the tone I wanted the book to convey. I used character and paragraph styles to keep the text consistent throughout, learning how those smaller decisions could make the book feel more cohesive. Bringing the photos, type, and page layouts together was where the project really started to feel like my own.
Reflection
This project made learning InDesign feel much more rewarding because I was working with something personal. It connected my interest in photography with a new set of design skills, and helped me see how much thought goes into making a recipe feel clear, inviting, and enjoyable to read.
The most fulfilling part was printing the finished book on a glossy paper substrate and sharing it with family and friends. After spending so much time arranging everything on a screen, holding the physical book made all of those decisions feel real.