The aim of this study is to investigate how the semiotic modalities interact (or not) in two ’domestic science- and consumer knowledge’ books. Unfortunately this interaction is often lost when the multimodal perspective is forgotten. The fact that this type of literature often is uninspiring and poorly designed does not make things better. This paper will use a wider text concept as a stepping stone toward an understanding of the interplay between multimodalities and semiotic resources in the books. A theoretical literature study combined with an empirical analysis will lay the foundation to answering my research questions: how do the modalities in two ’domestic science- and consumer knowledge’ books interact and how do these books relate to earlier research on multimodal texts? The result was somewhat surprising as it showed that from a collaboration point of view, the book that was perceived as the least inspiring was as good as the one that was perceived as the more interesting. The conclusion drawn was that design plays a greater role than one might think and that is just as important as as a well functioning interaction between modalities. In textbooks, all parts are important to create meaning.