the story

For one of the main projects for ARTSTUDI 147: Art Book Object, a studio art class centered around exploratory bookmaking practices, I decided to create a miniature book to serve as an account of some of the amazing foods I had a chance to eat whilst traveling in Japan. In creating this book, I wanted to explore different ways of conveying the experience of cuisine, given that the structure of the book itself was rather standard (hard cover, standard hand-sewn pages). As such, I pursued a mix of watercolor, ink, and paper art to represent the dishes that I was fond of.

In order to maintain general readability, as well as visual flow between each page and the next, I decided to have the main content on each page be a simple black and white ink sketch of the dish, focusing on the shape and lines created by the food. To supplement this drawing, I included a group of three colored rectangles along the opposite page's border, representing the three primary colors of the dish depicted. This, while giving some context to the dish, allows the viewer to fill in much of the image for themselves, creating perhaps a more interactive and curiosity-driven experience. In addition to these rectangles, each page features a rectangular cutout, which allows the viewer to see the colored rectangles on the previous pages in order to see the ways in which each dish contrasts.

The cover, meant as an inverse of the content within, is largely filled by soft color in order to represent the calming experience of the different foods sampled. This softness is contrasted by the geometric cut outs that reveal the black surface underneath, mirroring the cut outs inside the book, as well as creating visual tension. Finally, I added the more organic shapes in the middle to depict generalized plates of food, as to give an indication of the contents of the book.

Through making this book, I was able to explore various means of information visualization, as well as gain a deeper appreciation for layout, contrast, and craft. I hope to be able to look back on this project and remember both the process and the foods fondly!