Fine Cooking Logo

Fine Cooking Website Refresh

Client

Fine Cooking

Role

Visual/UI Design
Art Direction

Overview

Fine Cooking is a magazine for those who love to cook and experiment on a culinary journey. Their mission is to fuel passion and creativity in the kitchen. Recipes are accessible for any skill-level, palate, and anyone with a love for cooking. They cover a range of topics, and have a team of experts crafting stories and recipes. The content gives multiple ways for cooks to engage and feel confident in their skills. Overall, they strive to be a trusted kitchen companion, and provide a sense of community.

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The Problem

Fine Cooking has beautiful content, however their website was in need of a refresh. The pages were very busy, which did not allow the photography to shine. Because it was very outdated, there was a lot of information that needed to be restructured. The site was also not very mobile-friendly, which is important for their users. 

The Solution

My role on this project was to lead the visual design. I worked closely as a subcontractor for a UX designer during the process. I was brought on later in the process after the wireframes were complete.

Stakeholders were sent a design survey to help give insight on what their goals were. With this information I was able to determine the brand voice for the site.
Design mood boards for cooking brand

Mood Boards

My process always begins with mood boards. For this project I created 3 distinct style tiles using actual content. They included imagery, typography, color palette, icons, and various component styles. It was enough to give an idea for what the site should feel like once completed.  

Brand Words: Passionate, innovative, reliable, intriguing, approachable

Brand Voice: Inspirational, trusted, friendly, creative, approachable, tasteful, clean, collaborative
Marketing components for cooking site

Marketing Components

While working on the visual design, I also created several marketing component templates to use on the site. This kept the brand cohesive through all channels, including social media.
Style guides for cooking site

Style Guides

After the page templates were finished, I created a style guide for the new site. This helped to provide more clarity for both developers and the internal team.
Food website on desktop

The Final Product

The completed design satisfied many stakeholder goals. After the site launched, users were prompted to take a survey to give their thoughts on the new site. The results were overall very positive. It accomplished many goals including:
  • Easier and more user-friendly recipe search with enhanced filters
  • Improved navigation with easy to find information
  • Responsive and accessible on any device
  • Beautiful food photography was now able to shine
  • Clean and simple design for a friendlier experience
Cooking website design layouts