OUGD504 - Augmented Design - Recipe Card Design Decisions

After adding the content I decided that the plain background was a lot nicer than the gradiented one. I feel that the gradient is too distracting to the eye when you're trying to read the instructions, and the contrast between the colour of the images and the white at to bottom of the gradient is too strong, whereas having a constant background colour that is used within the images makes the contrast a lot softer.

Text

When I originally started working with the content I tried sticking to the style guide I produced for the website for means of continuity, but it was naive of me to think I could religiously stick to it as it should be obvious that if your smallest text size is 12pt, you're not going to fit much body copy on an A6 spread. 

For this reason, the lists are at 10pt, which is the size I tend to use for body copy, the text under the title is 12pt, which is just big enough for it to be noticeably bigger, whereas the column headings are 18pt so they're big enough to draw your eye straight to it after you've read the main heading. The main text itself is 56pt, apart from the ampersand, which is 36pt as I didn't want it to be as tall as the capital letters. This sort of ratio looks nice, and those numbers specifically work well for the grid, as shown below.

Images

Like I suggested in my research post, I wanted to keep the images quite quirky to make the tone of voice less serious. The egg carton and pancake stack are vectors I made using photographs as a starting point. I placed them in the corners so there is a visual balance between the top and bottom of the page. The whisk was place where it is to break up the space between the columns, that was a free vector I found on the internet that I altered.

   

Border

Having looked back on the examples I found, I saw that a few of them had borders, which I feel give them a more feminine feel, which is something I haven't particularly concentrated on. By experimenting with the idea of using a border, I feel like it has this effect on my recipe card too. 

I also think that having a border may be necessary in the context of it being on a fridge door, as there may be plenty of other things on the door, and having a border around this that frames it will make it more noticeable.