Pretty as Pie: Cooking Blog Designs

“Why would they do this!”

I heard my wife in the kitchen and just assumed our cats decided to run wild again.

“What’s up?” I asked.

She showed me her phone. There was a recipe for a Guinness beef stew on it. She had the whole page highlighted.

“Why is the…”

“The page highlighted? This!” She unclicked it and the white letters disappeared in the in the cream background. It looked something like the text below…

INGREDIENTS

2 tablespoons olive oil, divided

3 pounds beef chuck roast, trimmed of excess fat and cut into bite-sized pieces

Now I know I should be nicer because designing blogs is not an easy task. We should not judge the content by its presentation, but as humans judging is in our nature. We may not mean to but how could you not be turned off by a combination of swamp green and comic sans? We always judge by looks, but as someone who is horrible at web design and coding, I always try to not judge to harshly.

 I cannot speak for everyone, but when I am looking at cooking blogs that 3 things that stand out to me are:

• Color
• Font
• Pictures

There are reasons why color, font and pictures play a role in design and why readers notice them first.

Vibrant as Cranberry Sauce

The internet is a sea of cooking blogs and it is important to stand out in that sea. Color is the ultimate power tool. Aside from being aesthetically pleasing and helping a cooking blog stick out, colors are a great way to catch your audience’s attention and connect to their emotions.

Made You Look!

Color can grab a reader’s focus and certain color wavelengths have been shown to attract human attention. The study reported that red, yellow, green and pink are the four most eye-catching colors. Now with that being the case you would expect all cooking blogs to utilize these colors, but that is not the case. There is still a lot to consider when picking the right colors for a cooking blog. You want to be identifiable, play to your reader’s emotions, but you also do not want the background color to cause your recipe or food photos to sink in the background.

This Color Makes Me Remember…

When I see warm shades of oranges, reds and browns I think of coming home from basketball practice with a pot roast that my mom prepared for our family on the table… Maybe it had to do with those so 70’s it is embarrassing plates, but I digress.

The point is colors have a way of triggering emotions and memories. This can play a vital role in what food blog might catch our attention.  According to Allison S. Gremillion’s blog, the way different colors can play off a person’s emotions is based the color’s brightness, tint, tone and shade. She also mentions that colors can have various meanings which is illustrated in the chart to the right.

This Tastes Like Green

Colors can also influence your appetite and eating habits. In Kari Hartel R.D., L.D.’s article she explains how some colors can trigger and suppress appetite. For example, yellow has also been found to stimulate your appetite because yellow is associated with happiness and green is healthy even if the food is not necessarily healthy. These are some things to consider when choosing a color for a cooking blog, but it is ok to pick a color because it looks nice or fits the theme.

The color you choose for your cooking blog does not have to have some grand symbolic meaning, but it does help to pair your font with your color choices.

Speaking of Fonts…

The water is boiling over, the oven timer is singing the song of its people and you are trying to figure out if the recipe is asking for 3 TSB or 3 TBS because font and font size is hard to read. Font is something that can frustrate a reader but when you are trying to prepare a meal for judgmental in-laws or a party it can almost be rage inducing. Picking the right font size and font not only changes the look and theme of a cooking blog, but it can impact the readability.

This is Me Now!

I have mentioned that having an identity is important in food blog design and font can help tie a theme together.

Cooking Comically is a great example of picking a font to help compliment the comic book theme. Between the recipe being in panels and the directions being in the font from figure 1 you know what the theme was. Using a font like Times Roman would kill the identity of Cooking Comically.

The font that The Pioneer Woman uses in her blog is Georgia and Helvetica (everyone uses it so why not?) and it helps tie together her blog. It helps give it the “Live, Laugh, Love” and home cooking feel that Ree Drummond is associated with. Now imagine that font being replaced with Chiller font. I hope the thought of this makes some of you laugh as much as it made me laugh. Chiller font would completely alter the theme and feel of her blog. With the horror vibe that Chiller gives, some readers might feel a little on edge reading how to prep the Thanksgiving turkey if the recipe was typed in that font. As someone mentioned, imagine reading the directions “Reach into the neck cavity and pull the innards out” typed in Chiller… It is disturbingly hilarious.

Looks Mean Nothing If You Cannot See the Recipe

So, you found the perfect font for your cooking blog and it is going to make everything stand out… And then you realized that the color, size, and type make it painfully difficult to read. It is not uncommon to have a happy accident like this.

When it comes to picking out the right font sometimes you must pick what is practical verse unique looking. The Homicidal Homemaker could have used some horror themed or 50’s themed font, but they stick with a simple font. It makes sense to make the headers a unique font, but having the recipe be anything other than a simple font would be difficult to read and who really has the time to guess the recipe says when you are hungry or have guests on the way.

Food Pictures: The Star of the Blog

The main star of any cooking blog is the food (rarely the narrative). The vibrant colors of the fruit, the shadows and contrast of a perfectly brazed brisket and the carefully coordinated dishing of said food is sure to make any cooking blog stand out.

Do I Even Need Pictures of My Food?

Absolutely you need to include photos of your food. As mentioned before, the food photos are the star of the cooking blog and is the hype man. I am a visual person when it comes to food and when I see a recipe accompanied by a picture of the finished product then I more likely to try it.

As I mentioned in my previous blog, I Just Want the Guac Recipe!, some cooking blogs utilize a lengthy narrative to generate ads which helps bring in some money. Some people want to write a narrative as much as we want to read them, and a great compromise is to take pictures are the cooking process. The Modern Proper and The Pioneer Woman do a great job of this and for the visual learners or anxious new chefs, those photos can help provide reassurance that they are not going to char the pie.

Which is My Best Side?

Taking photos of a finished dish is a skillset of its own according to Kate of Cookie+Kate. Some of her tips for getting the best pictures of your food are:

Lighting Matters – Take photos under natural light and never use the flash.

Move Around – Find the best light source.

Take Photos from Multiple Angles – Just like me, food can have more photogenic sides.

Minimize the Clutter -The food is the star! Plates, napkins, a fine tablecloth, etc., should accent your food photos, but not detract from them. The Food does not like to share the spotlight!

Order Up!

There are so many factors and design choices to keep in mind for a cooking blog. Color, font, and photos are key things I pay attention to when subscribing to a cooking blog and when I was designing my own for fun(Someday I will have time to dedicate to Chef Cat.). Other factors to consider are layout, theme, do you want to focus on a specific cuisine, but readers tend to notice colors, font, and the pictures first.

What are some of your favorite recipes? This one here is a favorite in my house and is very quick and easy to make.