Presque Très Bien by Barbara Michelson

Presque Très Bien chronicles chef Barbara Michelson’s cooking journey from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris to a 16-foot catering trailer on Eastern Long Island to Mayfair Farm, operated by her daughter in rural New Hampshire. The book interweaves a lifetime of stories with hundreds of recipes.

Barbara wanted the hardback book to be beautiful, user-friendly, but also not full color. Since she was not including food photos, this decision made sense. Our challenge was to illustrate the book without using actual photographs and to make the recipe sections stand out from the memoir sections. We settled on a full-color cover and a two-color interior design that made the text highly readable; we paired the two-color text with elegant engraving-style illustrations of the ingredients featured in Barbara’s recipes—a look that inspired the book’s colorful collaged cover.

We worked with a U.S.-based offset printer, and were very pleased with the end result—a quality book that feels comfortable when held, is easy to reference while cooking, and is wrapped with a tough but smooth, matte cover that can be cleaned easily after use in the kitchen.