Where do I even begin?

I first conceived of this idea in sophomore year of undergrad... Having just learned that we would have to do a senior thesis in order to graduate, I found myself wondering what kind of a project would be large enough, that I would be passionate about enough, to sustain me for a whole year of thesis?

Even though senior thesis was still 2 years away, I have no shortage of anxiety about being prepared, and was therefore already beginning to stress about it.

When I lived at home with my parents, from my childhood to early adulthood, I had the privilege of eating my parents' cooking every single day. I may not have been entirely appreciative at the time, given that, being a kid, I just wanted to eat junk food... but when I got to the point of being in school all on my own for the first time, I began to really long for my parents' food.

One day, as I was calling my parents yet again for a recipe — which, if you know Asian cooking, you would know that there is no "recipe" just vibes... — a lightbulb went off in my brain: what if I wrote a cookbook of home recipes? It would be equally for myself as it would be for others.

I was incredibly excited by this idea, and immediately started to think about what kind of graphics I would have, what the divider pages might look like, what the cover might look like... Now that I've been through that process, I feel that the cover a book, much like the title, should be something that comes last, since it should, in theory, sum up the entire writing, and it's hard to summarize something you haven't seen yet.

I got very excited about the idea of having some kind of cooking utensils on the front cover, with very simple illustrations of different spices, and came up with the working title "Home Cooking for Yu," because who doesn't love a good pun?

Even though it was sophomore year, I went straight for it, figuring that the sooner I got started, the sooner I could flesh everything out. Of course, nothing is that easy, and I knew that things would very likely change, as ideas evolve over time. That very week, I started to conceptualize a cover (which again, is not the place I would start now):

Wow! Am I glad that that isn't what I ended up going with... It's not bad... but it's decidedly not good. I suppose that at the time, I was looking for something that would be more neutral, middle of the road, clean cut... thank goodness I pivoted when it came to that.

I also got very excited about having some kind of divider pages, for appetizers versus main courses versus desserts. I actually really like how it came out, but in the end, I simply didn't have the time to work on enough recipes to use any kind of divider page, especially since I didn't even have enough to have different sections.

I actually quite liked the little illustration I did for it, but I think over time, I just realized that the design was simply too sanitized, impersonal, and emotionless. Here I would be, writing a book about the foods of my childhood, a time that is typically nostalgic in many ways, and yet I was designing as if it was incredibly commercial, meant not to offend anyone. But what is the point of making something that has no soul?

During one of my more inspired moments, I thought about using photographs and showing the whole cooking process rather than just the final product, but... it still looked wrong.

I did end up beginning to format and document recipes for a couple of my favorite dishes, and the more I worked on these spreads, the more I found myself disliking them. Of course, these photos were taken on breaks when I would visit home, so I could document the recipes and also learn how to cook and enjoy the foods myself, but it just didn't feel right. While I'm not a photographer by trade, it wasn't how the photos were taken that was a problem, it was the fact that they stuck out, rather than blending seamlessly into the pages (and of course, the font was completely wrong as well).

I had chosen this particular Chinese font, called ZCOOLQingKeHuangYou, which I loved for its thick, mostly uniform strokes, with rounded edges. It felt cozy in a way. But then I hit the problem of finding a matching font. As I soon would learn, it is very difficult to pair Chinese typefaces with English ones: there's not usually a lot of overlap. Of course the ZCOOL font had English letters, but they didn't look anything like the Chinese ones, they were angular in places that would've been better round, or sticking out in places that I personally disliked.

So what could I do but try other fonts? The one I used in the very first stages of my ideation (the above pages) is a font that I had made, based on a style of handwriting I liked at the time, which got me thinking... why don't I just design my own typeface to match ZCOOL? I got straight to it, literally scouring the Internet for resources on how to make my own typeface for free or for cheap.

I found a software that was compatible with Adobe Illustrator, and started to design the letters. Then, I uploaded them into the program. I quickly realized that I did not understand enough about the program to figure out how to set automatic kerning, and honestly, didn't really feel like going through all that, and decided that I would manually kern every single title in my book. Oh, and I also didn't make any numbers for my font. Just the 26 letters, and an apostrophe. And what would I name such a font, but ZCOOLER?

I remember working on this font in a practically manic state during the winter break of my sophomore year, desperately trying to get it done before going back to school and being so busy with my coursework that I wouldn't have a spare moment to think about working on this project. I did manage to get it done, and shortly after, I put the project down for about a year, but it lived in the back of my mind the whole time, and I pondered what kind of recipes I would want to include.

I had started college as a person with a mostly fine arts background, and as a result, knew very little about graphic design. Sophomore year was the first time I had gotten introduced to typography, Adobe InDesign/Illustrator, and all the other things a designer should know. Which I think should explain why my very first ideations looked the way they did.

Looking back, I feel a sense of silliness and pride, because for one of the very first graphic design things I ever did, barely even knowing how to use the programs... it could certainly be a lot worse. But silly too, because wow, I can and have done so much better, and I am endlessly grateful that I ended up scrapping these drafts.

I spent some time compiling a list of recipes I wanted to include, and eventually settled on the 18 that are included in my book.

In college, I had wanted to double major in graphic design and illustration, which, for credit reasons and time constraints, I wasn't able to do, so I settled for an illustration minor. During that time, I got the inspired idea to illustrate all the recipes for my cookbook, thinking that perhaps, it would mesh with the text a bit better than my photos.

I took a class called Illustrating the Edible, and that really kicked it all off in my mind. I decided I absolutely would be illustrating every single item in my book. And eventually, near the end, I took a class that involved designing patterns, and created the endpapers for my book as well.

So now, that was three things I was going to do for this book: 1) write and record all the recipes from my parents 2) illustrate all the dishes that would be featured, and 3) put all of those pieces together (yay graphic design!).

Somewhere along the way, I began to really care about the prejudices my ethnic group faced for the first time. Growing up, I was often reminded to rise above, and even when people would say some horribly racist things to me, I was either a) at an age where I was very naive and didn't understand what it meant, or b) rising above the negativity and choosing not to give it any kind of weight.

This is all and well, but during the pandemic, I began to see how awful the prejudices could become, hearing news articles of Asian people getting harassed in the streets, sometimes even beaten or killed, and it brought me a great sadness. That, coupled with a few people in my own life acting as if casual racist comments were no big deal, continuously hurling racist jokes at me as if they were funny... I began to learn more about what it all meant, and decided that I didn't want to be so passive about it anymore.

I am still not necessarily going to fight someone on what they're saying to me, because personally, I try not to let it affect me, but started looking at it from an angle of education. While I have not really ever been offended by racist comments, I feel a deep sadness that people think it's so acceptable to say such hurtful, mean, and often untrue, things, and I really wanted to stop some of the misconceptions that I was seeing going around, once again, especially during the pandemic.

I decided to incorporate that into my project as well, which meant that I added a fourth thing to my plate: 4) write about my experiences, back it up with research, and make sure the text is somewhat substantial and easy enough to read.

Whew. A very full plate. And as it turns out, I actually only had one semester to really work on it. The first semester of senior year was more of a... "explore what you might want to do" kind of time. So I was keeping up with my classwork, and starting to work on my book as much as I could, because I knew that getting it done in just shy of five months was going to be practically impossible. I basically convinced myself to do a triple thesis: writing, graphic design, and illustration.

That semester, I was either in class, sleeping, or working on my book, often while on calls with my friends, or watching shows in the background.

That hard work really began to pay off, as I began to lay out what I wanted the pages to look like, and started to really like what I was seeing. I must have done something right in my very first iterations, because I kept the squiggly line between the Chinese and English names, as a way to both separate and tie them together:

At first, I spent most of my time illustrating the dishes: first, sketching all of them and adding base color, and then going through and rendering all of them. That was both extremely fun and extremely torturous. I had the idea to make all of the serving dishes a matching set, which I felt really tied the images together. By the end, I didn't want to lift my pencil again for a good long while. Hooray! Time to move on to the next part: writing the memoir pages!

This proved to be quite the daunting task. I had started to gather topics that I wanted to write about, but I wanted to make sure anything I was presenting as fact had a resource backing it up, and while I shared a lot of stories and personal opinions, I wanted it all to sound cohesive, and flow together.

I often think of my life in quotes, or relating to scenes from books or movies, and was therefore inspired to add a question for a reader to ponder, and a quote which relates to the topic I discussed. I ended up with 17 topics, spanning 18 recipes (one topic had two parts). 

I decided to print my recipes on vellum, so that the beauty of the illustration would shine, and in their partially transparent way, connect the recipe with the writing, as one would be able to see the illustration no matter which page they were reading.

It was a mad dash to finish all the content in the book: the full-page illustrations, which took roughly 8-20 hours each, the recipes and background/interesting facts, which took multiple rounds of editing, and last but certainly not least, the memoir pages, which took many, many rounds of editing before even going into the book, and then even more editing once I'd seen it laid out on the page. Where did I need to shorten a word, or cut something off? Where could I add a little more text, and what would I add? I had many quotes in mind already, but sometimes I still had to search for one that fit the topic. I had questions in mind already, but was very committed to the format, and had to reword some of the questions so they would all fit in the space I had allotted, shortening words and phrases as I went.

Finally, I finished all of the text... and moved on to writing and formatting the introduction, What's Left Over — because I have always cared deeply about the topic of food waste —, and my own reflection. Of course I had to thank all the people that made the book possible: my family, who helped me write and edit the recipes, fact check me, and give me more ideas... my friends, who tirelessly helped me edit my text, even while in the midst of their own thesis or final exams... the people who inspired me to keep going on this project that was becoming an all consuming force in my life at this point.

I was finally done with all the text, the illustrations... but what about the cover? I was beginning to panic by this point, because I still did not have a good title, or an idea for what the cover might look like. "Home Cooking for Yu" absolutely no longer fit, but I couldn't think of anything else. Then one day, as I was talking to my friend about something that needed mulling over, I said the phrase "Food for Thought," and it was like lightning struck my brain: of course that should be the name for my book! What is it but food and thoughts, and food to cook and eat while you ponder some thoughts? Eventually, I decided to add the subtitle "A Chinese-American Culinary Memoir," to give it a little bit more of a description, and differentiation. And after all that I had worked on, it was only fitting to hand letter and illustrate both covers...

As is the case with most of my illustrations and all of my hand-lettering, I prefer to do the sketch by hand, take a photo, and bring it into Procreate or Illustrator (I find it particularly difficult to sketch digitally). And what could the back cover possibly be but many people enjoying a meal together, featuring some of the dishes from the book?

With all this said and done, I still had to actually produce a final copy. All throughout this process, I had been printing out pages for scale, color, proofreading, and so on, but now it was time to put together a whole thing. And of course, there was a final hiccup... I was quoted five hundred dollars to print 3 copies (I had wanted to have a copy for myself, one for my parents, and one for my aunt and uncle). $500! Of course I did not have $500 to spare as a college senior, and decided instead to print the pages off at my school's print studio, and then trim and bind the book myself.

Luckily, I was able to get it on the first try, and bound one perfect copy. Well, close to perfect anyway. I noticed after the fact that I had a small spacing mistake that I wanted badly to fix, and later on I would go to check over all the text again, to get rid of any possible mistakes (although I'm sure there's something hidden somewhere, still).

Before I went to do the final print, I had come up with the idea to make a coloring book of just the pages for this book, particularly because my mom loves to color, and I thought it would make a nice Mother's Day gift, along with showing her my work. It was a very rudimentary book, with no recipes, just illustrations, and I am heavily considering re-doing it so that it is a recipe and coloring book (no memoir), but that will have to come later.

Above is a photo of all the pages, covers, and bellybands printed out, with crop marks for me to trim and bind together. Unfortunately, I don't have a photo of when I put together the actual book, because I was so stressed about getting it just right... but this experience truly made me love the production process even more, and is the reason why I began to gather supplies so that I might be able to produce as many of my own products as possible.

Finally, all of this culminated into Art Walk, the place where all of our theses would be on display. I got to cut vinyl for the first time, and had a small space to display my book, and show off all that I had done.

But how could just this little display explain all of the work I had put into the book throughout the last few years, but especially in the last few months of crunch time? This project had consumed all my time, energy, and care, truly making it nothing but a labor of love.