Cookbook Hatred

Here are a couple of things I hate about the design of some cookbooks:

1. Tiny fonts. I made a good German Rye Beer bread today from one of my many bread cookbooks. It has some interesting recipes and, overall, I like it, but the ingredient lists are almost invisible. The ingredient typefaces are very thin and are a measured 5 points. On top of that, "en fractions" are used (the numerator is directly above the denominator and the whole fraction takes up the width of the letter "n."

I was browsing through the book last night and chose the rye bread recipe above. I couldn't make out the size of the fractions so I put on some reading glasses. No dice. I got off my couch and held the book directly under a lamp. Still no dice. I finally had to find a magnifying glass and determined one fraction in question was "1/3" (my fraction style is called a "fake fraction," as in 1-1/3 cups).

Curious as to the size of the font, I found my 10X magnifying font scale and determined 5-pt font was used (way bigger than the small print in contracts dah-dum-dum ). I was curious exactly how thin the typeface was so I placed a strand of my hair over the numerator, and they were exactly the same width. The whole thing is a product of stupid design and is not cook friendly.

2. When the font and paper are similar colors. One cookbook I tried to read in the evening under incandescent light had brown type on tan paper. It was impossible to read except in daylight. What's wrong with book designers?

I get some revenge, though. I've judged fiction/nonfiction books for about two decades, and I mark down any cookbooks with the above deficiencies.

I feel your pain Larry.
These things really have a negative impact on people with compromised vision, age related or otherwise. I wouldn’t buy the book. But sometimes a magazine article may tempt..
Sometimes I resort to photographing a recipe on my iPad so I can expand the font size.
I particularly dislike the colour thing. Don’t what they are thinking when they do yellow on white etc.
One reputable local cook has the recipes on her web page in pale blue font on white background. Pass! I think her books may be the same.

Yeah, you get it. Why don't book designers?

These fraction are so small and thin I don't think people who have normal vision could discern the numbers. I took another magnified look. The numbers in the fractions are only 2 pt. That's so tiny, it's like they're using technology to print microchips. No one can discern a 2 from a 3 at that size, particularly when you're cooking.

The bread turned out great, though. My kingdom for carbs! If only.

On the internet, I always make a local copy of any interesting recipes -- allows me to fix the fractions, add notes, adjust it a bit.

And it discards all their pointless layout choices in one swell foop.

Catch 22 - the font is so small that it can only be read by someone under 30, but no one under 30 is likely to cook, so.....

[Jenise]

I hate books that try so hard to be accessible to beginners they talk down to anyone who knows anything. I would think it best, in fact, to write as if all your readers are intelligent and accomplished. I looked at a recipe this morning for a large potato gratin. Near the bottom was a big blue sub-heading, as large as the recipe title: HOW TO SCALE DOWN THIS RECIPE. Then the text: "Divide all the quantities in two...."

Don’t what they are thinking when they do yellow on white etc.

Perhaps it's an attempt to make the text harder to photocopy.

-Paul W

When I was working I used to foil such attempts to prevent copying, much less reading content. I used the full version of Adobe Acrobat 11 Pro on the computer which I used for various legal tasks (home users aren't likely to pay c. $500 US for it and they have switched to a rental model now at around $20/month).

I scanned the recipe into Adobe format and then copied it into Word format in whatever font and size I wanted and printed it out. That's a lot of technology and cost to accomplish the task though, unless you happen to have it already for some other purpose. Sometimes even that route had issues with heavy toned overlays and such and I had to do an extra step using OCR software to get it to figure out what the words were in the scan and then correcting by hand. Argh.