Chapbook: Family Favorites
As a child, I always had the fascination with reading and looking a my grandparent's recipes that were written in cursive. I thought they were beautiful and personal. They mean the world to me. This got me thinking and something I have been doing since I was in high school was hand-writing recipes for my future children. It has always been an idea of mine to be able to pass down my grandparents, mom, and my recipes to them. When we were assigned this project, this was the first subject that came to mind. Although, a chapbook isn't handwritten like the recipes of the past generations, my "hand" and heart is still present in my final chapbook. If you spend time looking at the typography, you will notice the small details that required close attention and the intentional problem solving that took place. Since the chapbook is handmade and designed by me, I feel as though it still holds that same amount of special that the handwritten recipes have.
Some larger challenges I faced when typesetting this book was to figure out an interesting layout that included a system where everything is placed intentionally, resulting in an effective 3–column grid. I paid extra attention to details including the use of hyphens versus en dashes, proper handling of other punctuation, small caps, italics, tracking, type color, etc.
I chose to do Coptic binding so my pages would lay flat when the book was open. I wanted the book to be able to function in a kitchen setting, where pages need to lay flat for better usability. During the production stage, I made several prototypes to practice binding and figure out which of thread to use, how far in the stitches should be, and just to practice the craft of Coptic binding in general before binding the final versions.
