Cooking for someone is caring for someone: It's an act of love.
For my capstone project, I created an at-home cooking show called Home Spice with my partner, Ali Sultan. So many cooking shows focus on mastering the recipe perfectly but we wanted to create a cooking show that highlights the warmth around cooking instead.
Meet the Host!
Ali is a Twin Cities based comedian and also the host of Home Spice. The premise of the show is Ali learning a new recipe shared and taught by a featured guest. The episode concludes with them sharing the meal and conversation together.
Design Challenge
Many cooking shows only focus on the execution of the dish. When I started learning to cook a few years ago, I remember being put off if the recipe looked too perfect because it felt unattainable.The way cooking is portrayed tends to hide the mess, the imperfections and the process around making a meal. This focus on perfectionism can intimidate new cooks like myself and it removes the warmth and fun from cooking. My design challenge was to create cooking material that has depth, warmth and shows the mess.
Research
We came up with the Home Spice concept a year ago but it feels even more timely now since COVID-19 has changed people’s routines and habits with food.
A HUNTER special report food news study looked at how Americans’ food habits have changed since the pandemic began. Over half (54%) of consumers are saying they are cooking more now than before COVID-19 started. Of these consumers who are cooking more, 50% claim they are more confident in the kitchen while 26% are learning more and building greater confidence.
More people are cooking and feeling confident in the kitchen but not everyone.
For my user testing, I interviewed people with a range of comfortability in the kitchen to try to understand how to make the show more approachable, informative and easy to digest.
The common takeaway learned from these users is to keep the recipe organized and concise. Other insights I learned were to keep the ingredients simple or offer easy to find alternatives, include a variety of recipes on the show and utilize social media for the cooking content.
Process
I was guided by these words when designing the branding for the show:
Warm
Messy
Expressive
Creative
Energetic
I love motion graphics and I wanted the opening animation sequence to set the visual tone for the project. When I was designing the opening animation title sequence, I wanted to highlight the mess and process of cooking. The more I thought about the process of cooking, the more I saw parallels to the process of painting. They are both messy, creative and expressive.
This gave me the idea to use paint as a design gesture in the sequence
Although I was inspired by the process of painting for the design, I wanted the food to still remain the star so I let the ingredients dictate the palette
The music I chose for the opening sequence was played by my mom. We selected a classical piece that was high energy and exciting.
For the type logo, I wanted the logo to clearly convey cooking. I chose to mix a bold typeface with a more casual handwritten typeface.
You can view the completed opening animation sequence here
In summary, Home Spice has been a very meaningful project for me. I hope some of the warmth and love from cooking comes across in the content. The scope of this project also reflects the diverse set of design skills I have acquired in my time in this program.
Here’s a list of the tools and technology I used in this project:
Paper and Pencil
water color paint
camera and audio equipment
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe After Effects
Adobe InDesign
Adobe Premiere Pro
Html / Css
Github
Thank you for your time in learning more about my capstone. Look out for new episodes and recipes coming soon!
End Notes
Cheryl Miller Houser, “The Science of Storytelling”, interview by Andrew Yang, Yang Speaks, September 3, 2020, audio, 58:22, https://yangspeaks.com/
