Poster by Classic Letterpress for Anne Willan

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CLIENT

Anne Willan is the founder of the pres­ti­gious Ecole de Cui­sine La Varenne, which oper­at­ed in Bur­gundy, France, from 1991 until 2007. Willan is a rec­og­nized author­i­ty on French cook­ing, with more than 35 years of expe­ri­ence as a cook­ing teacher, cook­book author, and food columnist.

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BRIEF

Anne asked me to design a poster that would demon­strate the evo­lu­tion of cook­book writ­ing through­out four cen­turies, across many coun­tries, begin­ning with four sem­i­nal cook­books. She came to me with the infor­ma­tion of each book and idea of using branch­es in a tree to show the progression.

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APPROACH

The pur­pose was to cre­ate a beau­ti­ful and infor­ma­tive poster track­ing the devel­op­ment of cook­books through four cen­turies and half a dozen lan­guages. Kei­th Cran­mer was com­mis­sioned to paint a water­col­or illus­tra­tion of a tree which we then print­ed let­ter­press in four col­ors. The type was let­ter­pressed in three colors.