Zero Gluten

Art Direction – Maxi Mayer

Zero Gluten (working title) is a gluten-free baking book published by Südwest Verlag. As art director for echt jetzt, we developed the design concept and visual direction for the book together with the publisher.

Baking books are a crowded category with a settled look: warm wood, linen napkins, soft daylight, script type. We wanted the opposite. The concept treated the subject as contemporary rather than traditional — a bold, near-monolithic yellow cover carrying the echt jetzt mark as a blind emboss, editorial layouts built on a strict grid, and generous white space instead of rustic styling.

The direction extended to the photography. We specified how the food should be shot: clean, graphic, close, with texture as the subject rather than the table around it.

The concept was handed to the publisher, whose in-house design partner produced the final book. What is shown here is our original direction.