13. MUCCA DESIGN
Lively and rich in authenticity, Balthazar is the closest one can get to a fin de siècle Parisian brasserie in Manhattan. The Balthazar Cookbook rivals its own kitchen with mouth-watering recipes spread across beautiful, glossy pages.

“We wanted to capture the energy and style of Balthazar,” says Matteo Bologna, who, along with Victor Mingovits, designed both Balthazar’s branding and its cookbook.

The greatest challenges came with using QuarkXPress, which was required by the publisher. “Our studio had already switched to Adobe InDesign, and XPress doesn’t have the typographical control that we had grown accustomed to,” Bologna says. Some of the typefaces used in the book were originally designed for the restaurant graphics. “When we worked on the restaurant,” he continues, “we designed a partial alphabet and added letters as we needed them. For the book we needed to develop entire character sets and solve kerning and letter-spacing problems.

“Visually, this book is a natural extension of the design we created for the restaurant,” he says. “The cookbook not only features recipes, but also conveys the look and experience of Balthazar for those who treasure the restaurant’s atmosphere.” Romy Ashby