Cook and Capture Class

Brand & Content System

A cooking and photography class built from the ground up. I co-founded Cook & Capture and led the full creative buildout: brand identity, website, photography, and social content, designed to stand out in a Chicago market full of cooking experiences that mostly look the same.

Backstory

The Concept

Cook & Capture is a one-of-a-kind interactive experience based in Chicagoland. Part cooking class, part photography workshop, participants learn to cook, food style, and photograph the dishes they make, all in one session. The concept sits at the intersection of food, creativity, and community, designed for people who want to do something different on a Saturday afternoon and leave with both a meal and a shot they're proud of.

The challenge wasn't building the experience.

It was making the brand communicate it fast enough to get someone to book.

The Creative Problem

Chicago has no shortage of cooking classes. The ones that get attention tend to look either overly polished and aspirational, or rustic and homespun. Cook & Capture needed to feel like neither. The target audience was millennial and younger, people who are already on Instagram, already interested in food culture, and looking for an experience worth talking about.

The Identity

I collaborated with a local graphic designer to bring the visual identity to life, bringing my creative direction into a system that could work across web, print, and social from day one.

The creative territory we landed on was bright, eclectic, and unapologetically fun. Bold colors and modern typography gave the brand a personality that stood out visually without taking itself too seriously. The goal was a brand that felt as enjoyable to look at as the experience itself was to attend.

The Website

With the brand defined, I designed and built a fully interactive website focused on two things: getting people to sign up for upcoming workshops and making the social proof impossible to miss. Upcoming classes were pushed to the front of the site, and the design was built to funnel curious visitors toward a booking as quickly as possible.

Photo and Video

The hardest thing to communicate about Cook & Capture was the energy of actually being there. Stock-feeling food photography wouldn't cut it. What the brand needed was imagery that showed people what the room felt like: hands-on, collaborative, genuinely fun.

I directed a lifestyle shoot built around the experience itself, capturing the candid, in-the-moment energy that makes someone forward a link to a friend and say "we should do this." Those photos became the backbone of all web, social, and print materials.

Social Media Management

On social, I designed all brand creative elements and storyboarded and edited short-form video content, keeping the tone youthful and relatable to match where the audience was spending their time.

The Results

Cook & Capture launched with a visual identity and web presence strong enough to establish it as a credible, bookable experience from day one. The social content connected with the audience it was built for, building a community around the concept and driving workshop signups before the brand had even reached full capacity.

For a concept that lives entirely on its ability to make people feel something before they show up, the creative had to do a lot of work. It did.