The New American Kitchen
Visual Identity, Publication
An immigrant cookbook to commemorate the 20th Anniversary of the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans
Food as a language of collective memory
To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, Isometric designed a commemorative cookbook that incorporates recipes, photographs, and stories from 40 fellows across 24 national origins. Organized as a collection of cards that are gathered in a custom box format, the cookbook deploys food as a metaphor to celebrate the shared dreams and enduring heritage of American immigrants. In collaboration with chef and stylist Jen Wong, we recreated and photographed all featured recipes, celebrating the vital and nourishing ethos of the Fellowships program.
Sharing culture, creating community
A distillation of culture shared across time and place, food can be complicated. Its aroma can be overpowering, its textures unfamiliar, its taste acquired over time. And, it always comes with stories and memories. We worked with Jen and Serena Wong to plan, cook, and plate fifteen featured recipes to ensure that readers could follow along easily, especially since some of the recipes came from grandmothers' handwritten notes or even just memories of distant places. The result was one of the most inclusive publications produced by the Fellowships, and one that honored and celebrated the journeys, stories, and contributions of the Fellows. Readers can take the book apart, reorganize it, and put it back together to suit their needs.
