Fusion Social: The Bar Book is a cocktail recipe book I created for a fictional bartender. My intention was to practice creating layouts that incorporate a significant amount of text. I wanted to work primarily in InDesign, using Photoshop and Illustrator to support.
The Fusion Social logo was designed in Illustrator. The front cover was designed in Photoshop. I used knockout layers to get the desired text effects, as well as image editing techniques for brightness, contrast and color correction. The cover was then brought into InDesign as a link. Image by Olena Bohovyk on Pexels.
Each of the elements on the left side was designed in Photoshop. For the background, I created a pattern using the Fusion Social logo. The image of the cocktail was masked out, and then a stroke was added to it, as well as some light photo editing. After designing the elements separately, I brought them over into InDesign for the layout. Text throughout the book was created through prompting ChatGPT. Image by Ata Ebem on Pexels.
The image on the left page was created in Photoshop. I used several photo manipulation techniques to create a collage of "Abby" with a background of flowers. I then applied a stroke to the image. The full layout was created in InDesign, with text provided by ChatGPT. Images by Tamra Creatives Agency (woman), Jan Van Bizar (pansy), Susanne Jutzeler Sujufoto (red poppy), and Pixabay (yellow poppy, rose) on Pexels.com.
Getting into the actual recipes, I had an opportunity to utilize the Parent Pages feature in InDesign. I utilized Parent Pages to do an initial layout of the recipes, so each page would have the same text boxes, and all header styles and bulleted list styles would be the same throughout the book. I then edited the pages individually later on. As a last step, I was able to create a new Parent Page to add the page numbers. Photo by Cottonbro Studio on Pexels.
The orange peel with the smoke effect was created in Photoshop to be brought into InDesign for the layout. The cocktail on the right was masked out in Photoshop to allow for it to overlap the layout blocks. Similar techniques were used throughout the remainder of the book. Images by Robin Kumar Biswal (orange peel) and Gul Isik on Pexels.com
Image by Isabella Mendes on Pexels.com.
Images by Hatice Telli (left) and Lisa Fotios (right) on Pexels.com.
Images by Timur Weber (cucumbers) and Yigithan Bal (mint) on Pexels.com
Images by madking833 (cocktail left) and haidangnb992 (lavender) on Pixabay.com, and Kiro Wang (cocktail right) on Pexels.com
Overall, this project was a fantastic learning opportunity. It was a great way to integrate the work I've done in Illustrator and Photoshop, and to incorporate them into a fully realized project using InDesign. I learned a lot about working in InDesign, including working with linked assets, using Parent Pages, and using Character Styles and Paragraph Styles. I had the opportunity to practice commonly used photo editing techniques in Photoshop, as well as creating patterns, and working on masking. It was also a great exercise to work on my typography and type hierarchy skills. I also had fun working with ChatGPT to write cocktail recipes and text for this project.
Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed this project!
