Info back design research.
After the small group crit we had, I was given the advice to look into recipe books especially those that use soft photography, and so in order to get straight into the search process, I went on pinterest in order to recieve the images I wanted quickly and concentrated into one place.
Below is the board where I have been pinning.
http://www.pinterest.com/geeloveslola/recipe-books/
My favourite designs that I found that are most relevant to the advice that I was given are shown below, I was advised my my peers to play heavily on my idea of a recipe book, including photographs that I had taken myself of the equipment used etc in a soft focus/out of focus like manner often seen in many recipe books. Below are the designs where I thought incorporating this concept in would work the best:
I feel that this is the best layout I have found when the designer incorporates both illustration and photography into the book. The use of a minimal colour scheme and simple line illustrations really allows the illustrations to support the full colour photography rather than combat it, like some of the other colour illustrations. The designer also seems to have colour picked the colour scheme from the photograph which allows the spread to flow harmoniously.
I feel that the piece above really plays on, and creates a harmony between a modernist/minimalist style an traditional kitchen cookbook. The format is set up so that there are no spaces around the edges, and the design fills the full pages. However the designer also does a modern take on the 'kitchen chalk board' which many people may have in their homes, and would use them to write notes on about recipes. This is furthered by the choice of type (white) which reflects the use of chalk. 
The above design is one that stands out most to me, The left hand page where the recipe is actually is simple, but does not lack style. One would assume that using solely photography and text would create a very clean crisp and corporate attitude, However the colour combinations used, and fonts chosen portray a more cultural, classic personality.
Soft/ Out of focus photography
Below are some examples of the kind of photography I would like to do, for the backdrops/ borders etc of my pages, photographing the tools/ingredients I have used to create the prints. We can also see how these soft/out of focus effects are regularly used to photograph food, which is what I am aiming towards.
I feel as though, from the images I can see above that the Images that have the focal point in focus work best and are more commonly used when photographing food. However I don't yet want to rule out the other options from my designs, as I feel out of focus images will help more so to attract the audience to the recipe and piece of work rather than the background image.
I drew out some layouts below which would involve using soft focus photography, in different sections, I will transfer these into illustrator and experiment with opacity.
Below are the 6 layouts I designed for the recipe/photography combination pages. I then took these into illustrator to see how they would pan out when in context, experimenting with opacity, once I had done this I had 12 layout options to choose from.
Full length, central section for recipes, side sections for photography, 100% opacity:
85% Opacity:
Full length, left section for recipes, right section for photography, 100% opacity for right hand side pages:
85% Opacity:
Full length, right section for recipes, left sections for photography, 100% opacity:
85% Opacity:
Shorter length, central section for recipes, surrounding sections for photography, 100% opacity:
85 opacity:
shorter full width, central section for recipes, bottom section for photography, 100% opacity:
85% opacity:
Smaller central section for recipes, full surrounding sections for photography, 100% opacity:
85% opacity:
After looking at the range of possible layouts I have above, I have decided that the best one to use for my recipe book is the first one I put together:
I prefer using the images at full opacity as when using semi opacity's the layout tends to look more digital based. I am writing about digital print, however, I don't want this to command the attitude of the whole book, and so I feel like the full opacity plays against this. The recipes also get to be the central focus in this layout design, which is then supported by the use of photography, as I want the writing to have a hierarchy over the images. By doing this my layout will look similar to the one above which I find to be the most effective.
Another thing that was suggested to me during the crit was page size. What page size is most appropriate to my audience? I wanted the size of the book to be easy put into most bag sizes. I considered that the book could be even more handy and easily kept by being pocket sized, however this would give no benefit to the content of the book.
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