Inspiration: Jamie Oliver

One of the things I’ve always tried to do on this blog is talk about things which inspire me, most­ly in my design work. It’s not always hap­pened as I’ve want­ed it to, but recent­ly I’ve been notic­ing things a lit­tle more and see­ing that it’s not just design work that inspires. So this post will, hope­ful­ly, be one of sev­er­al which talk about some­thing that has inspired me.

One thing that has­n’t come out much on my blog, is that I like to cook. My reper­toire might be a lit­tle small, but I enjoy it and I’m always look­ing for some­thing new to try. Recent­ly I bought Jamie Oliv­er’s new book Jamie At Home and it’s inspired me to try a few new dish­es. I want­ed to bring it to your atten­tion for a few rea­sons. One, it’s inspired me to cook through it’s easy, sim­ple yet tasty dish­es; and two, I real­ly like the graph­ics of the book, it’s inspired me in my work as well as my cooking.

My Cooking

Let’s get start­ed with the kitchen. I guess, I need to own up now, it’s not just the book that has inspired me but also the TV shows that accom­pa­ny it. I know I would­n’t have bought the book with­out them, the two are tied togeth­er very well, and Jamie’s enthu­si­asm is noth­ing short of infectious.

What I like most about the book is its non-threat­en­ing approach. The recipes aren’t your usu­al list of instruc­tions, but are instead writ­ten in a nice under­stand­able para­graph that, if you need, can be bro­ken down to direct instruc­tions. It makes the whole process of cook­ing a meal a lot less intim­i­dat­ing and gives the feel­ing of free­dom. Instead of feel­ing like you need to fol­low each step rigid­ly, there is more a feel­ing that you can fol­low the para­graph and if you go slight­ly off it does­n’t mat­ter too much.
Ulti­mate­ly it gives me the feel­ing that I am cre­at­ing as opposed to copy­ing. It’s this which sup­plies, spurs, sparks, give it what­ev­er S word you want, the inspiration.

My Design

The book has­n’t just inspired me in the kitchen. It’s also inspired me at the Mac with my design work. I like the graph­ics in the book, they give that organ­ic and rus­tic feel which I guess typ­i­fies Jamie in his approach to food.

I like the sim­plic­i­ty of the drawn images which intro­duce each sec­tion of the book, and the tex­ture giv­en to the large type adds to the rus­tic hand-made feel. The gen­er­al feel of the whole book enhances that feel­ing of cre­ativ­i­ty that is gen­er­at­ed when cook­ing the recipes. This is part­ly why I found the book inspir­ing. My design work, as you can see from this place, focus­es on sim­plic­i­ty to gen­er­ate the right clean cut and hon­est feel­ing. Some­thing which I feel comes out in this book from Jamie. The sub­tle­ty of every­thing in the fin­ish just enhances it all. From the tex­tured mate­r­i­al on the cov­er, to the spot UV on the pho­to of Jamie, it all enhances the hands-on feel­ing of cooking.