Vai Comer o Quê?
cookbook
Overview
Vai Comer o Quê? is a vegetarian cookbook featuring 100 recipes organized around ingredients rather than meal types, creating a more intuitive way to explore the book. Apoëna was responsible for the editorial design, custom lettering, illustration system, and overall visual direction. The project received a Bronze Award at the Indigo Design Awards 2021 in both Book Design and Lettering.
What we accomplished
Cookbooks are meant to be used, yet many are designed primarily to be admired. For Vai Comer o Quê?, the challenge was to create a publication that felt warm, personal, and visually distinctive without sacrificing functionality in the kitchen.
The design was built around the experience of cooking from a printed book. Recipes were structured to reduce unnecessary page-turning, ingredients appear when they become relevant to the preparation process, and clear visual cues guide readers through multi-page recipes. Every design decision aimed to make cooking feel more intuitive, allowing readers to focus on the recipe rather than navigating the book itself.
At the same time, the publication developed a distinctive visual identity through custom lettering, watercolor illustrations, and a flexible chapter system organized around ingredients. The result is a cookbook that balances usability and personality, creating an experience that feels both practical and handcrafted.
Craft & Process
The visual language of the book was built through a combination of traditional and digital techniques. Every illustration was painted by hand in watercolor before being scanned and integrated into the layouts. Lettering followed a similar process: words were first drawn by hand, digitized, and then assembled digitally to create recipe titles and chapter openers.
Rather than producing every title individually, Apoëna developed a modular lettering workflow that allowed words to be reused across the publication. This approach preserved the character of handmade typography while dramatically reducing production time and simplifying revisions. Colors, chapter identities, and decorative elements could be adjusted digitally without sacrificing the warmth and spontaneity of the original artwork.
The result is a visual system that feels deeply handcrafted while remaining flexible, scalable, and production-friendly.
Key Features
- Award-winning editorial design and custom lettering
- Hand-painted watercolor illustration system
- Modular hand-lettering workflow
- User-centered recipe layouts
- Bronze Award, Indigo Design Awards 2021