I never knew how much was involved in creating a cookbook until I wrote one myself.

The details? Endless! The decisions? Constant and agonizing! The cover of Well Plated Every Day. is the perfect example of how much all the little details matter.

We have a gorgeous collection of photos (one for each recipe!) inside the cookbook, but as we looked them over, we realized there wasn’t a single one that properly captured the spirit of the book for the cover.

This book needed a cover shoot!

Shooting a cover meant that instead of highlighting a single dish on the cover of the book, we had the opportunity to include a variety of dishes to set a cohesive scene. I really wanted you to feel like you were being welcomed to sit down at the table and enjoy a meal.

I worked with the incredible Ashely McLaughlin—also a food blogger, at Edible Perspective—to shoot the cover. 

The Beginnings of a Cover

Ashley and I texted constantly for a few days, brainstorming recipes to shoot for the cover and potential layouts.

We also needed to figure out logistics—I was in Utah, my design team was in New York City, and Ashley was in Denver, but it was important to me that we find a way to work together closely to bring the vision to life.

To start, Ashley sketched concepts for the cover, which she sent to me via text. We hopped on a call with the design team, set a shoot date, and Ashley ordered baking dishes to give us options.

The Photo Shoot

The big day arrived! My editor, the book designer, and I all stuck close to our phones. Ashely updated us at every phase of the process for sign-off.

First, she staged the photo:

• We used buns as stand-ins for the chicken thighs so we could choose the color of the pan.
• While I loved the rich forest green of the first baking dish, that was kind of a problem—it was drawing too much attention to itself. White it is!

Then, we went to work deciding on all the small details, from the positioning of the plates to the colors of the utensils and napkins.

All of these elements seem inconsequential, but they actually make a HUGE difference in the overall look and feel of the cover.

Here’s a photo gallery to help you see what I mean—and how each step of the process looks a little more complete.

If you compare the fifth photo above with the sixth, you can see we added cookies at the top. The more we looked at it, the more we realized it was a liiiittle too much, so we pared it back.

The final result?

Even More Details!

With the photo shoot over, it was time to tackle the rest of the cover. What would the title look like?

The typeface was the easy part; we wanted it to coordinate with my first cookbook, so this wasn’t the time to bust out the Comic Sans. But the color proved to be trickier.

At first, we were pretty settled on black for the “well plated” portion, but the more I looked at it, the more it seemed a bit harsh—I wanted to try something else too. I narrowed my options down to these:

Ultimately, I decided on the third option. It felt the most true to the Well Plated brand and gave an uplifting vibe.

From here, we had to make sure the two books looked great together, both their front covers and their spines.

You’ll love having BOTH in your Well Plated collection!

The Result

I am ECSTATIC with how the cover turned out! It captures everything that makes me so excited about this new cookbook—which is now less than a week away from launching!

Order Your Copy to See it in Person!

There is still time to preorder the cookbook and get FREE STUFF:

• An invite to a LIVE cooking class where we’ll cook one of the recipes from Well Plated Every Day together.
• A preorder bundle with 3 sneak peek recipes (you get them before everyone else!) and 2 EXCLUSIVE recipes that aren’t in the book or on WellPlated.com.

Your preorders mean the world to me and they’re a big part of driving the success of this book. I so appreciate your support!

More Ways to Get Your Well Plated Every Day Fix

Learn about my book tour and see if I have an event near you—in person or on TV! And find out more about why I’m so flipping excited about Well Plated Every Day.