COOKING WITH HEROES
Cooking With Heroes celebrates the 100th anniversary of the Royal British Legion (RBL) and is written by volunteers from all three Armed Forces, including military chefs, who have provided delicious and authentic recipes from 100 regions around the world in which the Legion has operated.
As design lead for the publication I developed the books art direction, cover artwork, editorial template and campaign assets.
Challenge
The challenge was to design a new beautiful coffee-table book that would aligns with the then brand new Royal British Legion’s branding identity, while also creating a functional cook book allowing for a varied style of content and recipe lengths. The cover had to be impactful, modern and representative of the RBL, and its supporters.
The campaign had to speak to existing as well as new audiences that haven’t engaged with the RBL’s work until this point yet. The project was about celebrating the Legion’s work as much as creating beautiful coffee-table book.
Goals
Impactful, modern cover that represents the Royal British Legion as well as its work.
Communicate essence of book: bringing military staff, their stories and recipes, and their regions together in one publication.
Consistent but flexible typographic and editorial system across different types of content.
Strategy & concept
After getting a better understanding of the legions work, and the overarching idea behind the publication, I developed initial art direction and cover concepts using different approaches mixing photography, typography and illustration.
The strategy based itself around the poppy as well recognised and impactful symbol at the heart of the Royal British Legion. I illustrated cooking utensils and ingredients following the same style and build a circular pattern around the poppy representing veterans and supporters coming together.
Additionally, I worked closely with the editorial team to create a unique template and design system for inside of the publication. It holds not only recipes and food photography, but also accommodates local hero stories and other editorial content.
Credit: Head of Editorial – Stephen Mitchell, Food photography – Neil White
Process and sketches for different cover art concepts
I illustrated the final artwork in vector format, arranging different kitchen utensils and food ingredients around the poppy symbol in the centre.
This way the artwork was aligned with the RBL’s new branding, presented the book in a clean and modern way, and allowed for foiling and special UV varnish finishes on the cover.
The editorial and typographic system across the books internal pages followed a functional and clean look, reflecting the RBL’s brand colours and shaped to adjust to varying lengths of content, recipes and food photography.
