Editorial Published in

International Journal of Food Design, 2015, Volume 1, Number 1, p.3-9

Welcome to Food Design

We’re finally here. I’ve been savouring this moment for years. Everything started in
2009 when I was having a conversation about Food Design with fellow scholars. I
was talking about how great a discipline Food Design is, how interesting it is, how
engaging and how much fun it can be. I was discussing the reason this discipline
was still not properly recognised in academia, and asking myself why there wasn’t
yet a society and conference for Food Design, or an academic journal dedicated to
the subject. Until, my animated monologue was interrupted, and someone asked:
“Why don’t you do it… Why don’t you start a society and an academic journal on
Food Design.” That was eye opening. Why not? So, I did! A few months after this
conversation, the International Food Design Society was born; three years later the
first academic conference on Food Design was held; and a year ago, the first
international academic peer-reviewed journal on Food Design was established - this
journal. Now I’m sitting here, savouring this moment. I’m writing the first editorial,
for the first issue, of this new journal. Let me take it in…

Dear fellow researchers, academics and professionals, dear fellows passionate about
this subject that brings us together… Welcome. It is with the greatest pleasure that I
introduce to you the first issue of the International Journal of Food Design. A journal
entirely dedicated to the study and understanding of the wonderful discipline of
Food Design. The first tangible evidence that there are plenty of researchers and
practitioners who identify with this discipline, and a first tangible ‘basket’ to collect
research on this discipline. I like to think about this journal, and all its issues, like
baskets, where people choose to put, like a neat pyramid of polished red apples,
the results of months of lives, months of research, months of practice; a basket
through which they recognize themselves and to which they want to contribute. This
journal is for you.

I thought it was a good idea to try and answer the simplest and at the same time
most complex, difficult and frightening questions one could ask: what is Food
Design? The more time I spend with this discipline, the more anxious I get every
time someone asks me this question. People still ask it, all the time. For this reason I
think it is worth trying to answer the question.
As part of my personal involvement in the Food Design world, and as a
consequence of my frustration with the many definitions attributed to the two
words, “Food Design,” I categorised Food Design into sub-disciplines: Design with
Food, Design for Food, Food Space Design or Interior Design for Food, Food
Product Design, Design about Food, and finally, Eating Design (Zampollo, 2013b;
Zampollo, 2013c). The intent behind this was to create an overview of the
background knowledge from which Food Design can be approached, showing how
different background disciplines create various products and services. For example,
those who approach Design with Food are likely to be chefs or food scientists; those
approaching Food Space Design are architects or interior designers; and those
approaching Food Product Design are product designers or industrial designers
collaborating with someone who has “food knowledge.” With an increasing number
of international undergraduate and postgraduate programs in Food Design, we’ll
soon meet designers who have acquired more and more of the background
knowledge necessary to be food designers. What seems evident to me is that the
field of Food Design is huge. Food Design encompasses an enormous amount of
knowledge, that inevitably makes it interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary and
transdisciplinary. Thus defining it is quite a challenge.

In my editorial for the Food Design themed issue of Hospitality and Society
(Zampollo, 2013a), I put together a few semi-definitions from professionals. Moving
on from that, and still wanting this editorial to be of service to the understanding of
what Food Design is, I thought of creating collection of definitions from various
professionals in the field, as well as from the Editorial Board and Advisors for this
journal. This, I believe, is the most comprehensive collection of Food Design
definitions assembled thus far, and it includes the thoughts of the most prominent
minds in this field.

Here are the definitions of some designers and chefs. The first two definitions focus
on food itself, giving less importance to the contexts around food and eating;
whereas the third, by Marije Vogelzang, introduces her view on the difference
between Food Design and Eating Design.

Food Design is the design (Gestaltung) of edible objects, this includes all processes
– from the cultivation/breeding to the preparation of food - and all decisions that are
taken to determine food as an object; more precisely the design of taste,
consistency, texture, surface, the sound of chewing, smell and all other object
properties.

Sonja Stummerer and Martin Hablesreiter – Studio Honey and Bunny

Authors of Food Design XL (2010) and Eat Design (2013)
 Food design is the design of food, which is thought, perceived, contextualized,
ritualized, implemented and consumed as an object.

Martí Guixé
Generalist Designer

Food Design is part of a larger discipline I call Eating Design. Food Design is the
actual and literal design of food where food, as matter and thus material, is being
designed. This could be to enhance the eating experience, but it could also be to
communicate an ideology or to fight food waste. Food design is an important part of
Eating Design. Eating Design is the practice of designers working on the subject of
food. The outcome is not necessarily the material of food. It can also be a system or
a service. Eating design covers a large field connected to science, psychology,
nature, culture and society.

Marije Vogelzang - Studio Marije Vogelzang

Eating Designer and Author of Eat Love (2008)

The following definition from Anna Cerrocchi, one of the veterans of Food Design,
having organized the first Food Design competition and exhibition in 2001, places
Food Design firmly within Design, calling it a design process. I very much align with
this definition, because for me, too, Food Design is firstly about Design.

Food Design is a design process based on users’ needs, that modify one or more
features of the food and/or of the objects, tools, and ways linked to its consumption,
in order to improve the physical and mental fruition of food itself.

Arch., Anna Cerrocchi

Founder of ONE Off Studio, Lecturer at Turin Polytechnic (Italy)

The next two definitions, from chefs and designers in the catering business, bring
Food Design to cooking, the context of the dish, and the visual aspects of food:

Food Design is where the craft of cooking begins. Every dish begins as an idea - a
scent, an image, a feeling - that is ultimately built, refined, and polished into a
memorable bite.

James Briscione - Chef

Director of Culinary Development at the Institute of Culinary Education in New York

Food Design is the art of displaying food in a way that enhances its integrity while
drawing the guest to it with visually stunning, mouth-watering presentation.

TJ Girard - Designer, and Bob Spiegel - Chef

Owners of Pinch Food Design
Here are the definitions of the members of this journal’s Editorial and Advisory
Board. You will see throughout these definitions how strongly Design is embedded
in Food Design, and in particular, aspects of analysis and consideration of the eating
experience. These definitions are diverse and present a variety of views, simply
because the researchers come from a variety of backgrounds.

Food Design: designing with the medium of food and/or designing items, services,
spaces and systems related to food.

Dr. Berry Kudrowitz - Assistant Professor and Director of Product Design

College of Design, University of Minnesota, USA

A definition of Food Design must consider the breadth of both terms. Both should
be understood as practices and artefacts at the micro and macro level. Both must be
considered in their wider contexts, e.g. the social, historical, intellectual, and
technological systems they shape and which have shaped them, e.g. the design of a
piece of cutlery is determined as much by class-based attitudes towards table
manners as it is by the functional needs of getting nutrients into the body.

The most basic definition of design is planning. Food Design then is planning within
the context of the social practice of food culture. A concept for a table setting or a
menu plan is food design. But these plans are part of a wider network of knowledge
(whether educational discourses or family traditions) that shapes food and design.
These systems of knowledge become plans and then artifacts. These artifacts then
have their own impact upon their consumers, on future traditions and practices, and
on the environment.

Dr. Nicolas Maffei - Design Historian

Faculty of Design, Norwich University of the Arts, UK

Food Design: Activities to conceive in the mind and to enable the creation of a new
food product, specifying its ingredients, recipe, preparation, packaging,
presentation, instructions for storage, and instructions for serving.

Eating Design: Activities to conceive in the mind and to enable the creation of a new
way of preparing and consuming a selection of foods, specifying the characteristics
of the foods and the environment in which they are consumed, the tools used to
store, prepare, cook, eat, and transport the foods, and the way to dispose of its
waste.

Dr. Rick Schifferstein - Associate Professor

Department of Industrial Design, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

I think of Food Design in two aspects. One is the aesthetic presentation of food and
the other is the invention of new foods. The first is what characterizes high end
restaurants and cook books and the second is populist, characterizing such foods we
now take for granted like potato chips, granola, and hot dogs.

Dr. Victor Margolin - Professor Emeritus of Design History

School of Art and Art History, University of Illinois, USA

Food Design is an interdisciplinary and synthetic activity takes note of the multi
disciplinary research both of design research but also those disciplines, scientific,
social, psychological and aesthetic (we could go on and sub - divide further
disciplinary domains) that provide data and information for the designer in regard to
the varied aspects of the food experience in its multifarious ways. Food design must
be concerned with delivering life enhancing experiences and therefore at the
forefront has to consider the ethical dimensions of the Food Design activity within
the political and economic that constitute the space for the role of the designer in
the field of Food Design.

Chris Smith - Editor of the Journal of Visual Art Practice

Visiting Fellow at CCW Graduate School, University of the Arts, London

Food, more than any other substance is simultaneously a basic need and a luxury
object across the globe. Finding new design strategies and best professional
practices to address how we will consume, produce, and recycle food requires
interdisciplinary methods to enable designers, scholars, producers, and chefs to find
collaborative solutions to today's food systems so that we can all benefit from a
sustainable, healthy future.

Dr. Susan Taylor-Leduc - Art Historian

Dean of Parsons, Paris

For me, Food Design provides us with the opportunity to explore the development
of food, recipes and eating experiences from a whole new perspective. Until the
focus has almost always been on the food (where it comes from and how it is
manipulated) and, to varying degrees, those producing/cooking it. Food Design
makes us explore food from a much more holistic perspective. It provides a
framework that forces us to question the validity and efficacy of the way we grow,
process, cook and eat food. So, in short, Food Design provides a pragmatic way for
us to critically analyze and develop new foods and ways of eating.

Dr Richard Mitchell - Associate Professor in Food Design

Food Design Institute, Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand

I try not to think too much about Food Design because I end up googling around for
a word that can explain a relationship formed by my two favorite things. No
dictionary can help. Food Design is not yet a figure of speech, or the non-literal
 coupling of an oxymoron. Food Design is no more of an oxymoron than is, say,
landscape Design. To overcome this muddle we would need design teams that
could conceive of the weave from soil and seed, to slaughterhouse and bottling, to
cookbooks and ovens, across rail yards to tableware, in great halls with menus for
picnics in to-go packs and disposables for recycling - and back again. Designing
food moves us across this path that Elizabeth Cromley neatly names the Food
Axis. At any moment along this path, while you are nibbling at your computer, and I
am wondering how to cover that freezing cold air coming through the hole in my
kitchen wall where the milkman once delivered fresh bottles - we gather to talk and
to stew over the intersection of tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil because Food
Design is not yet a figure of speech.

Dr. Jamie Horwitz - Associate Professor of Industrial Design

Iowa State University, USA

Food Design includes ideas, values, methods, processes, and activities aiming to
modify, improve, and optimize individual and communal interactions with and
around food, including but not limited to edible materials, objects, experiences,
natural and built environments, services, systems, and networks.

Dr. Fabio Parasecoli - Associate Professor and Director of Food Studies Initiatives
The New School, USA

In the past, when defining Food Design, I had suggested the term 'metabolic
design' to describe the food design approach, which is the method of designing
tools, systems, cultures and enhancing food experiences by studying the 'cognitive
metabolism of users’ (or how they ingest, digest and assimilate a food value).

In one sentence, Food Design means designing human experiences and enhancing
food cultures, or better, knowing how to use sensorial and intentional affordances to
design new food experiences and cultures. This seems to be an extremely
interesting objective both for the expert of food and the cognitive scientist as well as
the food designer.

Dr. Sonia Massari - Director, Gustolab International Institute for Food Studies
Professor of Food Design at ISIA and SPD, Italy

Food Design is anything that improves the route from hand to mouth. Be it a new
choreography, delivery, form or language, at its best Food Design shifts our
perception of the edible world and improves the quality of life for a consumer.

Emilie Baltz - Food Experience Designer and Artist

Founder of Food Design Studio, School of Visual Arts, Industrial Design Department, and
Experience Design Studio, Pratt Institute, USA
 Food Design: the way in which design enables, advances and develops all elements
of the eating/making experience; from food utensils, containers, delivery options,
digital integrations to edible membranes, creative encapsulations and new ways of
perceiving the use and understanding of food-stuffs themselves.

Dr. Morgaine Gaye - Food Futurologist

Guest Lecturer at Nottingham Trent University, UCL, and Lund University

Food Design includes any action that can improve our relationship to food in the
most diverse ways and instances. These actions can relate to the design of food
products, materials, practices, environments, systems, processes, contexts,
experiences, etc.

Dr. Pedro Reissig – Director, Food Morphology Lab, Organiser of Food Design Education
Founder, Latin American Food Design Network, and Food Design North America

What is the definition you align with? All these definitions are wonderful to me. They
speak of a colourful discipline, full of potential. These definitions are different from
one another. Should this journal choose one? I don’t think it should. I think all these
shades of meanings, and intersections of areas of knowledge are what make this
discipline so interesting. As a guideline, the position that I take with this journal is to
be open to any research and project that simply connects Food and Design. If both
Food and Design are present and their relationship discussed, then to me, we are
talking about Food Design. As the call for papers indicates, we welcome articles,
case studies and interviews that investigate the connection between Food and
Design: Design applied to Food and Eating, or Food and Eating investigated from a
Design perspective. In other words, amidst all of the knowledge about Food and
Eating, we look at research where Design has an important role, and amidst all
knowledge of Design, we look at research that focuses on aspects of Food or
Eating.

The collection of articles in this first issue showcases a breadth of Food Design
topics. The article by Dr. Cara Wrigley and Dr. Rebecca Ramsey proposes a new
area of research called Emotional Food Design, integrating emotional design across
layers of food systems; the case study by Marius Hans Braun et al. examines the
effect of olfactory cues on the emotional perception of digital images; and the case
study by Gerbrand van Melle describes a project that transforms sound into edible
chocolate, through an emotional journey between sounds and shapes. Finally, this
first issue concludes with a Marije Volgezang interview, simply one of the most well-
known and important food designers – or rather, eating designer – with whom I had
the privilege and pleasure of discussing key aspects of this discipline.
In conclusion, did we answer the question ‘What is Food Design’? Definitely not!
Being definitive about Food Design would be useless. Definitions are there for
people to agree with, and most importantly to disagree with. What is more
interesting and useful, in my opinion, is to provide more “food for thought,” more
inputs for conversation, and to spark more debate. Now that you’ve read so many
definitions of Food Design all in one place, what is yours? How do you define Food
Design? That to me is the interesting question. This type of debate is one of the
many that this journal hopes to foster.

Thank you to all authors who bravely submitted an article for this very first issue, and
thank you to all reviewers whose invaluable job is what validates this process: you
are the pillar of this journal. Thank you also to you to you, the reader, who has
chosen to come on this journey with us. We do this for you: to inspire future
research, future projects, conversation and debate. I hope that you’ll enjoy this
journal.

Stummerer, S. & Hablesreiter, M. 2010. Food Design Xl, Wien, Springer.

Stummerer, S. & Hablesreiter, M. 2013. Eat Design, Wien, Metroverlag.

Vogelzang, M. 2008. Eat Love, Amsterdam, Bis Publishers.

Zampollo, F. 2013a. Food And Design: Space, Place And Experience [Editorial].
Hospitality And Society, 3, 181-187.

Zampollo, F. 2013b. Introducing Food Design. In: Cleeren, S. & Smith, A. (Eds.)
Food Inspires Design. Oostkamp, Belgium: Stichting Kunstboek.

Zampollo, F. 2013c. Yiyecek Tasarımı Üzerine (On Food Design). Yemekvekültür.