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.