8. CHRONICLE BOOKS
“The photos are not supposed to be appetizing,” says Jay Peter Salvas. “It’s not a cookbook, but a glimpse into this individual’s eating and social habits.” Chronicle Books saw Tucker Shaw’s plan to document everything he ate for a year as an opportunity to create a book that would appeal to “hipsters and foodies,” according to Salvas. “Tucker loves food but also saw the project as a kind of time capsule about people’s food habits in this day and age.” Which, if you’re Tucker Shaw, include everything from late-night bowls of cereal to raw oysters.

“The biggest challenge was the trim size and the amount of information,” Salvas notes. “I created a grid that allowed for pagination, without being stale. Shaw’s sporadic eating habits of a lot one day and not much the next allowed me to expand the grid and change image sizes.” The book also features actual napkin sketches for everything from title pages to chapter breaks. “I wanted the whole book to really get into the life of this person. It was important to have his handwriting present.”
Laurel Saville