Iowa Culinary Institute Magazine Spring 2024
Iowa Culinary Institute prints 2 editions of these booklets a year. They help raise money for the institute and for the French Chef Exchange. These are given out during their monthly gourmet dinners, where the guests are encouraged to donate money, and also for the already toque members to keep donating. As of now, we have no number on the amount donated since it is the beginning of 2024, and we won’t know until summer.
For this edition, Wren Kocher and I decided to do something very different from the previous editions. We incorporated lots of colors for the spring, simple bold type for legibility to be read during dim lighting, and illustrations to catch the eye. We came up with the style guide and layout of the booklet together. I focused primarily on illustrating, while Wren Kocher focused primarily on formatting and creating the layout.
Together we created a cohesive and fun piece, which the client loved and was very excited about.
This was my first ever freelance project, and I am so happy I got to do it with my friend Wren. This project pushed us more than I think we both thought it could. It was so satisfying seeing the printed product after each working on it for 80 hours.
Ideating and creating illustrations for each and every page didn’t only develop my illustration skills, but also my ability to think quickly and work efficiently.
This project also taught me when to trust my gut, even if the client couldn’t see the vision completely. When the magazine was almost over, I sent over a rough sketch for the cover on the left. The client replied saying that, that wasn’t what they had in mind, and wanted me to come up with a different idea. But I knew in my gut that I had to finish my idea for the cover before anyone could shut it down, and then I also create a backup cover. I presented them both to the client, and they loved them both. Funny enough, they ended up chasing my first original idea.
T-Shirt design
Iowa Culinary Institute are also going to start selling merchandise to students and staff, so they needed some designs that represents their program and relates to the culinary world. I decided to reuse the cover from the magazine, and make use of halftone dots of different densities to create varying values with still only using 2 colors. The other design, I wanted to create something a bit more delicate, so I created a bouquet garni, which chef’s use to flavour soups, sauces and more. I added a “worn” pattern to the illustration to make it more interesting, since there is only use of one color.
40 Year Anniversary Challenge Coin
Iowa Culinary Institute have a French Exchange Program, where every year students get the opportunity to travel to France and experience the culinary wonders there AND train with French Chef’s for their internship. They are coming up on their 40 year anniversary, so they wanted a coin to give to their students doing the French Chef Exchange, and to give to the French Chefs who visit.
They wanted France and America represented on either side of the coin, and to of course incorporate their logos. They also wanted to highlight that it is their 40 year anniversary of running this program. The coin is 3” in diameter with a gold finish.
I went with a really simple design, that highlights the colors, and golden elements. The coin is tactile, so the elements that extrude really stand out.