Every so often a book comes off the press that we just want to show off. Classic Cocktails is one of them — fifty essential drinks, from the bittersweet Negroni to a New Orleans Sazerac, set as a real Art Deco hardcover with a full-page photograph facing every recipe. It was built the way any book is in the studio: a cover, a spine, fifty spreads, and a 3D proof to approve before it ever reaches paper.
What follows is the actual finished book — the real cover and the real pages, straight from the print files, not a mock-up.
Fifty cocktails, one hardcover
The brief was simple: a timeless companion for the home bar. Each spread pairs a precise recipe — ingredients, glass, garnish and method — on the left with a full-bleed photograph on the right, shot to pour by. The text is set in a classic serif on warm cream stock; the cover leans into Art Deco geometry in navy, gold and oxblood, gilt-framed like a 1920s supper-club menu.
Flip through it
Use the arrows, the dots, or your keyboard’s arrow keys to move through a handful of the spreads exactly as they sit in the book.
Every page earns its place
The fifty range from the everyday to the showpiece — a Whiskey Sour with its cap of foam, a garden-fresh Gin and Tonic, a honeyed Bee’s Knees, a tiki-bright Hurricane. Each photograph was art-directed to match its drink and its setting, so the book reads as one object rather than a stack of unrelated pictures.
Spin the cover
This is the lightweight 3D preview we share for sign-off. Drag to spin the hardcover and see the front, the gilt spine and the back-cover blurb exactly as they will print — the same proof a customer approves before a single copy is bound.
Make your own
Classic Cocktails began as one short brief and ended as a printed hardcover. Yours can too. Start in the AI Book Designer, choose your binding and paper, and approve a 3D proof before anything is printed.
Where we get our news: for printing, paper and book manufacturing we follow PrintCAN; for the indie-author beat, The Alliance of Independent Authors, Jane Friedman and The Passive Voice.