ARCHIVE: November 2009
The Inner Definition of Food Design
November 03, 2009, 8:30 p.m.
Food Design is a discipline. Food Design is a very complex discipline that includes many other disciplines in it. The complexity of the subject is a consequence of the complexity of food itself. Food explains all people through cultures and religions. Everywhere in the world food defines differences rooted in history and social development. Nowadays food decisions are the subject for the studies of sociologists, scientists, anthropologists, psychologists and philosophers, besides being a focal point in industry and marketing. Food is everywhere and in every moment. It is not surprising that we take 200 food decisions per day or that there are 18000 restaurants only in New York City, and 1000 new ones open every year.
Food Design needs to be defined through different subcategories that better explain all its many facets. What is most important to explain is the inner definition of that part of Food Design that has food itself as a material, where food itself is designed. In these cases, the only thing to remember, when deciding if something can be a Food Design product or not, is that Food Design products give an aesthetic experience; they have a deeper meaning or a defined purpose toward the interaction with senses, emotions and expectations.
Everyone can do food design, but not everyone does food design.
Food Design shouldn’t mean designing food that looks beautiful. That is not enough. Food that tastes and looks exceptionally good is sill nothing more than food, and could be the product of any chef. Food Designers create food that tells a story, explains a concept, aims at something, has a purpose that is beyond nutrition and being visually pleasing.
This is the reason why we don’t consider particularly interesting what is called Food Art. At the same time we don’t want to consider such products as Art at all. This is not the place where to speculate on the definition of Art, but what can be briefly agreed is that Art isn’t just an expression of craft skills, and artistic products usually have something to say and have a deeper meaning.
When interacting with any kind of Food Design project, the experience is what matters. Living moments of our life in that environment, or eating something, or touching that object creates an experience. Everything that is around us, everything that is in contact with our body or that we allow inside our body affects us, not only in that specific moment, but in the past, recalling memories, as well as in the future, creating new memories. This is what the Food Designer should aim to: using food as a means to touch people.
Francesca Zampollo
Food Design: an absolutely new point of view.
November 23, 2009, 11:03 a.m.
I am really proud to take part in the creation of the International Food Design Society. We are witnessing great evolutions in the world of food: traditional ways of approaching the matter are not enough to answer to the changing requirements. Today’s society needs a new figure who can interpret and answer to the different necessities and expectations on food. It needs a Food Designer.
To be a Food Designer means putting together many different competences and skills. A Food Designer is not only a designer, or a chef, or a nutrition expert, or a psychologist…. he/she must be more than this, as he/she has to be able to face problems and find solutions drawing from the capacity and the knowledge of each one of these professions.
This point of view offers a great potential still to be discovered: it will produce innovation in functional, emotional, enjoying aspects, but it will also touch more demanding issues. Starting from child nutrition and going into the wide field of nourishment pathologies, the Food Designers will develop new products to fill existing gaps and improve our life.
This is the future we wish for Food Design and for the growing Food Designer community in the world.
Anna Cerrocchi
A new Food Design sub-category: Food Experience Design.
November 21, 2009, 9:28 p.m.
“Experience” as a general concept comprises knowledge of, or skill in, or observation of something or some event gained through involvement in, or exposure to, that thing or event. The history of the word experience aligns it closely with the concept of experiment (in the scientific method, an experiment - latin: ex- periri - is a set of observations performed in the context of solving a particular problem or question, to retain or falsify an hypothesis or research concerning phenomena).
The significant experience comes from this double movement: separation and wandering. So, having an experience, means living a moment and gaining knowledge from it. Designing and offering an experience means giving a starting point for reflections and knowledge. Moreover the experience is the feeling of emotions and sensations, as opposed to thinking; involvement in what is happening rather than abstract reflection on an event or interpersonal encounter.
So, when designing a food experience, the designer wants to offer a moment that will enhance the personal experience through food and all the senses that it can stimulate. Food Experiences want people to reach awareness of food, of their bodies and senses. People enjoy food, feel their senses operate and acquire awareness of their body.
Food Experiences are moments to live: a moment where people are the protagonists and food is the means to experience emotions. An emotion is “a moving out, migration, transference from a place to another”. It means “any agitation or disturbance of mind, feeling, passion; any vehement or excited mental state”. An emotion is every change of mood that an external stimulus provokes.
A Food Experience is something that has always been sought and designed. It is the “something more” that customers look for in an eating experience. It is eating at 50 meters off the ground, going to a restaurant where no cutlery are provided or where the to eat in complete darkness.
A Food Experience is everything you feel, believe or imagine while eating.
Agent Smith: Do we have a deal, Mr Reagan?
Cypher: You know, I know that this steak doesn’t exist. I know when I put it in my mouth, the matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, do you know what I’ve realized?
Cypher: Ignorance is bliss.
From the movie: The Matrix (1999)