Olivia Fowler
Technical & Professional Writing ePortfolio
Food Writing
Taught by Tracy Dalton, ENG 684: Writing About Food was one of my favorite courses and one of the first I took at the graduate level in Spring 2021. As an undergraduate student she was my advisor and she'd mentioned it before, so I immediately knew I’d sign up whenever I had the chance.
Citations:
- Gutkind, Lee. You Can’t Make This Stuff Up. Langara College, 2018.
- López-Alt, J. Kenji, et al. The Best American Food Writing 2020. Mariner Books, 2020.
ENG 684: Writing About Food
For this recipe collection assignment, I selected recipes that were all regularly used by my Grammy. As she’d passed at the beginning of the semester, it seemed fitting to focus the assignment on her as a tribute and gave me all the more reason to want the assignment to be its best.
Each page was created according to the style guide. Body font and second-level headings are Bell MT and first-level headings are in French Script. I love these fonts and would choose them again in a heartbeat. I think they both look soft and feminine, and I like that the headings look like someone’s handwriting. For individual recipes, ingredients lists are formatted in bulleted form, but sans-bullet, and I think I did that because if I included bullets, then all the text would be pushed further to the right and everything would look a bit more crowded. Instructions are numbered and each step begins with an action word, as we were taught in class.
For every recipe except for the Cookie Jar Sugar Cookies, I included a relevant image of the dessert itself or something related to the dessert, such as Dessert for Laurie. Roses were Grammy’s favorite flower, so I decided to incorporate them in the recipe collection, in an aesthetically pleasing way. Though I hadn't yet taken ENG 775: Designing Technical Documents with Dr. Judy Tarbox, I remembered much of what I'd learned from relevant undergraduate courses, such as ENG 421: Advanced Technical Writing. I wanted all of the colors to look cohesive with light pinks and for the images to not look too cartoonish, but to have more of a vintage feel. Finally, the page numbers are on little, light pink scrolls. I think it adds a bit more character to the collection.
I took this class before I worked as a graduate assistant in the Office of Strategic Communication and before I took ENG 604: Advanced Writing: Nonfiction with John Turner to learn more about Lee Gutkind's teachings about creative nonfiction, so I think my writing would be much stronger now, but I love this piece all the same. I’ve always cherished memories and to put this particular memory on paper for an assignment was even sweeter.
Our main text for the semester was The Best American Food Writing 2020 by J.Kenji Lopez-Alt et al, and this writing assignment was the opportunity to showcase what we learned about strong food writing. Incorporating sentences that helped the reader feel as if he or she is actively in the story, is huge in food writing. Additionally, ensuring that adjectives are reflecting what the reader should be feeling about the food being described, e.g. delicious food probably shouldn’t be described as “slimy” because that isn’t a typical texture associated with good food.
ENG 684: Writing About Food
ENG 684: Writing About Food
I loved putting this poster together! This was based around a paper I wrote about the effects of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) on children with ADHD, as the title suggests, and I tried to have all aspects of the poster point back to that. From the golden colors to emulate corn and the included small graphics of corn and scribbles to highlight the HFCS’ effects, every inclusion was specifically chosen.
As Gestalt teaches, I wanted the textboxes on the poster to appear grouped together in close proximity and similarity, but I wanted to ensure I had enough white space so that the reader wasn’t overwhelmed. All the boxes are perfectly aligned on the left side and perfectly aligned on the right side, furthering that point. While I hadn’t taken ENG 775: Designing Technical Documents with Dr. Judy Tarbox yet, I still made design choices I stand by. I think the gold and maroon colors complement each other and make sense. As previously stated, the gold was chosen because it was a toned-down color for corn. The maroon was chosen because I was in a MSU class and I thought it was appropriate.