Assignment: Illustrate a Recipe!

If you're an art teacher/professor, we would love to help you make a fun assignment out of asking your students to illustrate a recipe the They Draw & Cook. Illustration classes from many schools have used TDAC as an assignment and the results have been super great! Here, you can see examples of recipes submitted by students from Maryland Institute College of Art, Savannah College of Art and Design, Kent State University and Massachusetts College of Art.

After completing the assignment, you can direct your students to submit their recipe to this site (and include their school's name in the comment field of the submit form). We will post it for the world to see (assuming it's not offensive or inaccurate). And, if the quality is great, we will create a Featured Collection of our top 6 favorites from your class. Featured Collections are posted twice a week on the main TDAC homepage jumbotron and are viewed by hundreds of thousands of people (and quite a few art directors too!).

Here are some guidelines to help you define the assignment. And, please, feel free to contact us if you have any questions or to tell us that recipes will be on their way! 

Thanks from Nate & Salli!

Objective
Illustrate a recipe that is a family favorite or tradition. The best illustrated recipes are full of love and emotion. These feelings usually come from the fact that the recipes chosen by many artists to illustrate have either been in their families for generations (i.e. Great Aunt Noni's Noodle Kugel, Nonna's Brown Sugar Figs) or evoke some very fond memories from the artist's childhood (i.e. Meatballs, Veggie Dumplings). Grandma's are usually a great source for some really awesome recipes and fun stories to match, or simply recall a favorite meal from your childhood and ask a parent for the recipe. And, most importantly, have fun!

Recipe Size
16.667" wide x 6.25" high (5000px wide x 1875px high)

File Type
300 dpi JPG in RGB color (this is VERY important)

Things Nate & Salli Love to See in a Recipe
Hand-lettering, smart typography and/or hand-drawn type, original and creative layouts, accurate instructions and emotion (humor, sweetness, tenderness, etc). And, it's always great when an illustration accomplishes something that a photograph could never achieve!

Keep the Gutter in Mind
Nate & Salli have already published one book and hope to publish more. If you want your recipe to be considered for future publications, please try to be mindful of the potential gutter (the middle crease of a book).

Illustrating a Recipe from a Cookbook, Magazine or Website
According to the U.S. Copyright Office, copyright law does not protect recipes that are mere listings of ingredients. Copyright protection may, however, extend to substantial literary expression—a description, for example—that accompanies a recipe. You can make a published recipe your own by adding a favorite ingredient, illustrating the procedure in your own style, and/or modifying the procedure to make it better.