Independent product · Founder, designer and builder

Recipebound

Scattered recipes become a personal cookbook worth keeping.

I started with a recipe-collection app. Working with cookbook-makers shifted the product toward the book itself. I carried the recipe extraction forward and built typography, layout and print knowledge into a cookbook engine.

Recipebound homepage: From everywhere. To your table. Gather your recipes, make them your own and see your book. — Recipebound · selected Home design. The pictured books and materials are illustrative.

November 2026 · Two books being approved for print. Assisted collection work is underway; the complete self-serve beta path is still being verified.

01 · Choosing the book

Your collection. Your choices.

Choose a cover and interior separately, then inspect them together.

Recipebound selection interface preview showing the Typographic and Knox panel cover choices and the selected Bayfield interior — Selection interface preview rendered with selected Bayfield artwork · no changes saved. Original cover ↗ · Original interior ↗

02 · The product changed with the problem

Keep what worked. Change what people have to do.

Heirloom was the recipe-collection app I designed, built and shipped to the App Store. Working one-to-one with family and friends making cookbooks showed me that their goal was a finished book. Gathering and organizing recipes still asked too much of them.

I kept its recipe ingestion and source records, and changed the product around cookbook-making. People bring their collection and decide what belongs; the system takes on more of the organizing and layout.

Explore the earlier Heirloom app →

Earlier Heirloom Collections screen with Discover, Shopping, Meal Planning and Table — New direction → Take the collection through to a personal cookbook.

Earlier Heirloom video import interface for extracting recipes and retaining creator credit — New direction → Take the collection through to a personal cookbook.

03 · Building craft into the system

I had to teach it what makes a book.

Early output could put recipes on pages. I had to explain how type, spacing, images and page flow work together, and why physical books behave differently from screens.

I set the questions, directed research, compared results and guided implementation. Agents carried that work into software; I supplied the design knowledge and judged what was useful.

A page that belongs to a book: Section title, running head and folio establish the larger collection.
A recipe that can be followed: Ingredients and numbered methods have different jobs in the hierarchy.

Bayfield Main courses page 8 showing section hierarchy, ingredients and numbered methods — Bayfield · Main courses, page 8. A current composition example; the isolated continuation at the top of the second column still needs refinement.

04 · Making it personal

One collection. Different expressions.

A personal book should feel like it belongs to its owner. The typographic and Knox panel directions give the same collection two distinct characters.

Cover and interior choices are independent. Building that craft into the engine lets the person making the book stay focused on their recipes and the people behind them.

Phyllis Hanson’s Cookbook with large yellow and cream type on a red cover — Two cover directions for Phyllis Hanson’s Cookbook. Same collection, different expression. Digital designs; refinements to the typographic cover are pending.

Phyllis Hanson’s Cookbook with a blue decorative Knox panel and a cake illustration — Two cover directions for Phyllis Hanson’s Cookbook. Same collection, different expression. Digital designs; refinements to the typographic cover are pending.

05 · The work becoming useful

Real collections. Personal books.

A friend brought roughly 105 photographs of her late mother’s recipe cards. Ingestion handled them. My mom’s book carries forward recipes she had already entered in Heirloom.

Recipebound carries that work forward into the result they wanted: a personal cookbook.

9 November 2026
Two books being approved for print.

See this chapter in Career →

Photoreal visualization of Phyllis Hanson’s Cookbook: a red cover beside an open recipe book on a sunlit table — Phyllis Hanson’s Cookbook · book visualization using selected Bayfield designs. Printing pending; physical copies and recipients’ responses are the next part of the story.