Work
About

Danny Kahn
The Messy Cook

Role: Illustrator, Writer, Page designer, Photographer
Project Goal: This cookbook was created to fight against the norm of clean and organized cooking. When I cook, it looks like someone blew up my kitchen and I was tired of looking at cookbooks where kitchens are amazingly clean after cooking for 3 hours. Transparency in all forms are being applauded and getting more attention in any form of media. Content is shifting to becoming more relatable and design is following these trends.
Target Audience: 20-30 year olds learning to cook
Tools: Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Procreate
Branding Goal: As someone who has been a print and publication designer for 4 years, messy publication design sounds like a nightmare. The title of the cookbook is The Messy Cook, I wouldn’t be doing myself justice with a clean layout design. Illustration was a large part of making this look messy without looking chaotic. I took a lot of inspiration from old butcher and fish shops. I chose a color pallete of blue and red for this project in order to balance my illustartion style with readability.

Photography:Jumping into photography for this project has been a really fun learning experience. All photos seen are taken by me! Check out some of my highlights below!




Sometimes the process is messy.
As a chronically disorganized person, I can say with absolute certainty the end result is not what happens behind the scenes. My process is to throw all ideas on the artboard and see what sticks. After this first step, pairing down and getting organized is key, however, getting your hands messy in a new project is always exciting. I clean up in the end, and this is not the normal state of my kitchen. Sometimes a little mess is the key to my creativity. Below is evidence of my organizational skills while cooking as well as some early drafts of my front cover.



Flip Through! 
And feel free to follow the recipes!