Mini Books

One theme, gathered whole.

A Mini Book takes one Occasion Study — the free, complete study already on this site — and gathers everything around it into a single document you can build from: the Look Book, the full menu and bar programme, the exact palette ratios and the surfaces each colour is allowed to touch, five scene recipes written as recipes, circulation and service, the light plan hour by hour, sourcing judgement, the image brief, the working tools, and a forensic check before it ships.

What is inside one

Ten and a half to thirteen thousand words, illustrated, set as a web edition at its own address — /editions/<theme>/ — that we update in place when we correct something, so the copy you bookmark stays the current one. And because you cannot carry a browser tab into a venue, every Mini Book comes with its Field Edition: the specifying half typeset at A5 as a versioned PDF — the palette with its hex values and its Never column, the five scenes, the circulation and light plans, the sourcing matrices, the image brief, the working cards and the forensic check — built to be printed, carried and written on. Twenty-six to thirty-three pages, depending on the book. The web edition stays canonical and holds the photography; the Field Edition is the paper you take to the table.

It opens with the twelve-colour system in full: four principal colours, three supporting shifts, two contrast anchors, two resets and one luminous accent, each with the ratio it is allowed to hold and the surfaces it is cleared to touch. Then five signature scenes, written the way a recipe is written — what it needs, what a guest does, how it is served, how it fails gracefully. Then the room: circulation for 2–20, 21–75, 76–150 and 151–400 guests, with the light plan run hour by hour instead of described in the abstract. Then the practical layer: what to build, rent, buy, borrow or simplify at three budgets, sourcing judgement instead of a shopping list, the image brief a photographer could actually work from, and the working tools specific to that evening. It ends with the same forensic check we run before anything ships, the one that keeps the room, the language and the imagery from drifting into generic event styling.

What it costs, and why

Twenty-nine dollars. That is roughly a day’s planning work saved and a design decision protected, not a page count — below twenty dollars it starts reading like a template, and above forty it would need to become a service instead of a document. Three Mini Books built to be read together — a lane’s worth, not a pick-your-own — are sold as a set for $69, about a fifth off. Once there are a dozen or so of these published, the honest move is a pass: every Mini Book made so far, plus every one made after, for one price, so nobody has to keep buying the same thing twice.

What stays free, whether or not you ever buy one

Every Occasion Study — forty-one of them, currently — stays complete and free: the premise, the guest journey, the full public palette with hex values, the scale and budget snapshots, the risks, one small decision tool. Every Look Book stays complete and free. Every menu and bar concept stays complete and free. Every recipe actually recommended is free on Salty & Clever, with real quantities and method. Nobody is ever asked to pay to find out what the idea is. The Mini Book is for the person who already knows, and wants to build it properly.

The nine, so far

• One Match — a hall lit by a single flame: pass routes, candle counts and burn times by room volume, and the exact conversation to have with a fire officer before anyone strikes anything.
• The Tide Comes In at Nine — dinner staged on ground the sea is going to take back: how to read a tide table for the date and site, and the inward-move schedule keyed to it.
• The Ovens Are Still Warm — a supper cooked on borrowed heat from a bakery oven that is cooling all night, written against that falling temperature instead of around it.
• Last Night of the Season — a menu written backwards from whatever the kitchen has left to use up, and a room that closes for good, not just for the night.
• The Gold Is in the Cracks — a table set in mended ceramics: sourcing genuinely broken pieces, naming the kintsugi practice properly, and what a repaired surface needs to stay food-safe.
• Every Cloth Has Initials — a table dressed in inherited linen, with the custody and care it actually needs and a way to name it out loud without turning dinner into a eulogy.
• The Cake Arrives First — the running order reversed, so the most generous course in the house is the first thing a guest is handed at the door.
• The Observatory Supper — a dinner timed to a real astronomical event, run at red-light levels so the sky, not the table, stays the point.
• The Tiny Chef Took Over — an evening handed to a child to run, with the correction sequence written course by course and the arithmetic that buys the host a whole course sitting down.

Start with the free Occasion Study for any of these — read the room, the guest journey and the coloured world for nothing. Buy the Mini Book when you are ready to build it.