A woman and girl cooking together in a kitchen, surrounded by vegetables, fruits, and cooking ingredients like olive oil and lemon juice, with steam rising from a pot.

Let’s Cook

A Social Enterprise Startup, Solo (8 weeks)

Tools: Adobe Illustrator & Photoshop, Procreate, Figma

A workshop that helps families prepare quick, healthy home-cooked meals while fostering a supportive community environment.

  • How can we support single-parent families in their journey to access and provide nutritious, affordable meals for their families, helping them to feel empowered and confident in the process?

  • A community initiative that empowers families to cook nutritious, affordable meals through hands-on workshops that build essential skills and confidence, while offering resources and opportunities to connect and support one another.

  • Access to healthy food is a growing concern for low-income families, particularly as economic pressures force many parents to work longer hours to earn enough.

    However, as parents work longer hours, they have less time each day to plan and prepare nutritious home-cooked meals. Thus, families often rely on inexpensive, calorie-dense foods that are convenient and affordable rather than on fresh fruits and vegetables, which are usually more expensive.

    This problem is compounded when parents grew up in households where fast food and ready-made meals were the norm. As a result, they may have limited cooking skills and continue unhealthy eating habits across generations.

  • This is the first project that gave me the opportunity to dive deep into the design thinking process, in which each area was thoroughly researched and considered. I found the whole experience incredibly rewarding, especially witnessing how insights can be transformed into impactful design solutions.

The Design Thinking Process

Identifying the target market, conducting market research to gain a deep understanding of the target audience, and creating personas.

These insights directly shaped the community workshop concept and every design decision that followed, from the warm, accessible brand identity to the kitchen resources designed to support families beyond the workshop.

  • For the brand identity, I wanted to create a warm and welcoming visual language for the workshop. My process starts with a moodboard, then logo name brainstorming, thumbnail sketches, digitalisation, and finally the logo.

    During the logo name brainstorming stage, I explored words and phrases tied to kitchens, cooking classes, meals, recipes, and family, but none conveyed the sense of encouragement I was looking for. This led me to Let's Cook! It sounds like an empowering, inclusive phrase that feels like an open invitation to learn and cook together.

    For thumbnail sketches, I explored rounded typography, frying pan and chef hat illustrations, and a funky letter-based character, but it felt better suited to a children's show. When digitalising, I tested various fonts before choosing the final, refining the letterforms for a rounder, more cohesive feel. Then a chef's hat was added above the letter C to add a playful touch.

    For the final design, I refined the chef hat icon and chose a yellow-orange tone that felt balanced.

Moodboard

Brainstorm names

Thumbnail

Digitalise

Final Logo

The Outcome

First, launching the website and enabling user sign-ups will provide an estimate of the potential turnout.
Additionally, users will have access to more information about our workshop.

Website prototype link: letscook.co.nz

Screenshot of a colorful website promoting family cooking workshops, featuring illustrations of vegetables, fruits, and a woman cooking, along with sections about the program's mission, schedule, and contact information.

Posters will be displayed on community notice boards to effectively reach the target audience.

Community notices bulletin board with various flyers and announcements, including an ethnic practice event, dementia support session, football club, cooking classes, celebrating stitch event, work skills group, a walk football event, community market, health support, and a reflection submission call.

Alongside posters, brochures are handed out to local community organisations that provide support and services to families.

Colorful brochure for a community cooking program featuring vegetables and cooking illustrations, including tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, avocado, lemon, and a steaming pot of soup, with text about the program's story, values, and activities.
Illustration of a woman and child cooking together, surrounded by vegetables and cooking ingredients, promoting a cooking event for families at Freemans Bay Community Centre.

A magnetic board meal planner, with meal magnets.

A weekly meal planner on a whiteboard with colorful illustrations for each day, surrounded by kitchen utensils in a white container on the left and clear glass containers on the right.

A set of kitchen utensils to help them get started in the kitchen.

Kitchen utensils set packaging with a lemon color background, featuring a frying pan, chopping board, spatulas, and bowls, with the logo 'Let's Cook!' on the top.

Illustrated recipe cards with simple instructions.

Three illustrated recipe posters for pumpkin soup, chicken noodle soup, and avocado egg toast, featuring step-by-step instructions and ingredients.
Illustration of various vegetables and fruits, including celery, lettuce, avocado, broccoli, lemon, carrot, tomato, pumpkin, squash, and a pot of soup.

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