Deliciously Designed : How Design theory is applied to food production Introduction The design world focuses on the functionality and the beauty of different products that are part of the world of food, such as, the equipment used to prepare and cook food, the packaging of the products, and also the environment within food is consumed, by considering things like the furniture, the lights and the way the menus look. However, the design of food and drinks per se is not considered to be part of the design studies and practice, also the institutions and the art and design schools do not focus their teaching on this side of food and design. This book explores how the existing design theories can be applied to the production of food and drinks, and how these theories are already applied without even recognising them. Different examples will be taken from some of the different branches of design such as graphic design, product design and fashion design. Then it will be shown how the ideas and theories used in these different areas of design are applied to the making of food. The book starts with a first chapter about the five senses and how they react to colour and balance. The five senses have a huge importance in everyday life because they help to create experiences, for this reason is important to consider them when designing, but also when producing food. The idea of balance will be discussed as well in both the contexts of design and food. The second chapter is about form and function. When designing a product its shape will be defined by its function, we will discover how this idea is recognised in the food world, along sides with the ideas of texture and consistency. The last chapter talks about how design and food are approached. It will be described how chefs think as designers and how designers think to food in their work. Lastly a specific type of design approach called MAYA (Most advanced yet acceptable) will be described and it will be shown how it is used in the food production world as well. Chapter 1 : The five Senses 1.1 : ​The importance of the senses into design and food The five senses have a significant influence on our experience of the world and it is important to take all of them in consideration when designing a product or an object. For example the french philosopher Merleau Ponty would say that perception is not the sum of all the senses but is a total experience perceived with the whole being, which takes in consideration all the senses at once (Pallasmaa, 2014). David Seamon stated that everything that can be experienced with our senses (so it can be heard, smelled etc. etc.) can be subject of phenomenology, which is the philosophical movement that deals with the interpretation of human experiences,. For this reason it is strictly connected to interior design because interior design needs to deliver experiences to the audience when they enter into a building or an house (Seamon, 2015). Jinsop Lee, an industrial designer, explains that is important to involve all the five senses when designing an object, because they will improve the whole experience for the user (Lee, 2013). Lee uses an example of a clock that he designed as a student. His clock was made using a dwarf sunflower, the flower followed the movement of the sun making it possible to tell the time. On the other hand one of his classmates created a clock which involved the use of scented oils. Five different lenses were exposed to the sun , then some glasses filled with different scented oils would warm up with the heat from the sun through the lenses and people could tell the time just by the smell in their houses. Since his classmate managed to involve two different senses ,sight and smell, instead of just one like Lee his idea was thought to be better because it gave people a deeper experience (Lee, 2013). This branch of sensory design is also used in marketing. In the book​ Sensory Marketing​ the authors describe the importance of the senses when creating a product. They state that of the five senses, sight has traditionally been given a position of prominence, but that the other four senses can have a massive importance when people select one product over another (Hultén, Broweus, Van Dijk, 2009, p. 1). They believe that this approach needs to be changed because fewer people are watching television commercials, and so it is the aim of the marketing teams to create multi-sensory experiences for their public (Hultén, Broweus, Van Dijk, 2009, p. 1). A good example of sensory design and marketing is Starbucks. Starbucks’ coffee shops are designed to give an intimate experience to their customers: the environment looks warm and familiar, and with its green and yellow interior and the carefully selected music it can be a place where people can meet, but also a place where a book can be read peacefully. It has been designed to be “the third place outside home and work” and with the strong smell of coffee it becomes a 360 degree experience for the senses (Hultén, Broweus, Van Dijk, 2009, pp. 2-3) Food to be a good experience also needs to involve the five senses in the right way, just like in the design of the Starbucks experience. The food design duo of Sonja Stummerer and Martin Hablesreiter speak of the importance of stimulating all five senses. For them the eating experience is considered good when the dish involves most of our senses in a positive way, so it will not only taste good, but will smell and look good, and perhaps it will also make a pleasurable sound when is eaten (Stummerer & Hablesreiter, 2010. pp. 23-26), as they say, “If eating were only about calories intake, we could simply use infusion bags and pills, however our food is tempting because it comes in different flavours, recipes, ways of cooking, shapes, colors, surfaces and textures” (Stummerer & Hablesreiter. 2010. Pp. 23-26). In food some examples of design that does not consider the importance of the senses can also be found, just like Jinsop Lee and his sunflower lamp. Soylent is a drink created to substitute traditional food, while providing the basic substances that the body needs to survive. The drink is based on different proteins and vitamins extracted from soy, beetroots and algal oil (Fig.1). One serving provides 20% of substance that the body needs daily. Rhineheart, the creator of Soylent, defined traditional food as archaic or recreational, because his product can bring everything that the human body needs (Fig.2). Rhineheart’s product is not only considered efficient in terms of nutrition, but since Soylent needs just three ingredients it could stop the production of meat, fish and vegetables that get wasted in large quantities. Thus, as a consequence, as he states, events like global warming could stop since they are linked to food production. The drink, as Lizzie Widdicombe states in her article for the ​New Yorker​, has a yellow- beige color, without any particular smell and some sort of doughiness with a “comforting blandness”. Jinsop Lee would confirm that this example of design is not engaging properly with the five senses. But is it really worth abandoning classic food for something like Soylent? Bonnie Blodgett, professional gardener and writer for the Pioneer Press in Minnesota, states that Soylent is the solution created by science in response to the issue of nutrition into an industrialised society, where industry itself is destroying the idea of eating as something that makes people joyful (Blodgett, 2005). Ed Cara decided to test Soylent for a few weeks, the result was that he was feeling full but he started to miss real food and the whole experience of eating it. His comment on the experience was, “I like the anticipation attached to a home-cooked meal, the smell of a hard-earned roast chicken wafting from the oven. I like being able to go out to a taco truck at five in the morning in Sunset Park. And I like grabbing French fries and a hot dog with a first date as we ride the Staten Island ferry back and forth. I never hated drinking Soylent, even as it sloshed around my stomach on the last day — but I also didn’t like it.” (Cara, 2015). Eating and making food is really 2 based on the reaction that our senses can have, the same is true for design and for the positive experience that that designed product aims to bring to the audience. Fig.1 (Soylent, 2016) The composition of soylent Fig 2 (Soylent, 2016). The scores of amino acids in proteins in soylent compared to other types of food In summary, it is important to consider all, or otherwise most, of the senses in order to bring a more complete product into the market. Products like Soylent can be considered the Lee’s sun-flower lamp of food. They still achieve their basic aim but do not improve the people’s lives. For this reason considering the five senses is important in design as much as in food, and this design theory is applied every time into food production. If it is a sandwich or a lamp the process is the same, because people do not need products as much as they need good experiences. 1.2 : ​Balance, the gestalt of flavours and the golden ratio of taste 3 Ensuring balance into design it is a really common rule. This rule is based on the concept of Gestalt. According to the Stanford Philosophy encyclopedia the idea of Gestalt was created by the austrian philosopher called ​Christian von Ehrenfels​ in 1890. His idea stated that humans inherently look for a relationship between different elements and so Gestalt is used to​ indicate a whole that depends on several smaller parts​ (Stanford Philosophy encyclopedia, 2015). This means that if we have a series of informations that are linked together, we will first consider every single piece of information but then we will put them back together to see the bigger picture. But what does this means on a design level? It means that humans see different parts of an image as separate elements but then all these parts are put together again to form a larger image. An example of gestalt can be the Unilever logo, the smaller illustrations come together to form an upper case U, the eyes will perceive all of the different elements but then all of them will be considered as just one (Fig. 3). So since the eyes react in this way to images it is up to the designer to balance his or her works in order to give it a natural feeling. A good balance helps the viewer to receive the message behind the design in a straightforward way without challenging the senses too much, if in a composition all the elements are on the same side it will feel too heavy and imbalanced, also the information will fight between each other to stand out and, at the end, they will not communicate what they have to (Clayton, Hashimoto. 2009). Fig 3 (Unilever, 2016) 4 Chefs usually tend to balance the flavours of their dishes to give a better experience to their customers but also to help all the elements to stand out equally by putting ingredients that create harmonious contrast between each other. Former wine-maker called Jules Clancy talked about the importance of balancing the five flavours which are : sweet, sour, salty, bitter and, the recently discovered, umami. Clancy experimented with different grades of acidity for her wine, it was not just about making it taste sweeter, but it helped to change the sensation of the wine in the mouth, known as the ‘mouthfeel’, without that little bit of acidity the wine will feel oily in the mouth. So by adding a new layer of flavour in her wine Jules Clancy was actually able to improve not only the taste of it but the texture as well (Clancy, 2010). The sensory-analysis centre at the Kansas State University, formed by its supervisor called Edgar Chambers IV and seventeen trained tasters, conducted a study to understand the reasons why some brands of ketchup are more successful than other ones. After checking different statistics they decided to analyse two of the main brands which are Heinz and World’s best. The two sauces have been tasted and then all the components have been broken up to see the actual composition of them, then a batch of chips was requested to go deeper into the testing and the tasting (Remnick, 2007). Then Chambers explained the concept of amplitude, for example let’s take, as Chamber said, a professional pianist and a kid playing piano. They both play the same song with the same notes, but what is the difference? The difference is that the professional pianist will blend together the notes better than the kid (Remnick, 2007) . So what is amplitude? Amplitude is a word used to refer to well balanced foods. At the end of the study Heinz ketchup resulted to be high in amplitude while World’s best was low in amplitude, this because World’s best had a stronger sweet taste compared to Heinz, probably caused by the use of maple syrup instead of corn syrup, as Chamber states :”​It seemed like a certain flavor would hang over longer in the case of World’s Best—that cooked-tomatoey flavor.” (Remnick, 2007). So, the taste buds are able to perceive all the different flavours into the food but they will then put all of them in a bigger picture and consider them as one thing, so if they are not balanced the whole meal will not be as tasteful as it should, but also all the elements will not have their defined dimension within the dish. So Gestalt works not only on a visual level but also on a tasting level, and for this reason balance is an important element when creating a dish, just like when a designer is balancing all the elements in his or her composition to make it look even. Another theory which is the base of balance in design is the Golden Ratio. The golden ratio is a mathematical equation which helps to explain the symmetrical relationship between two proportions, the book called “Universal Principles of Design” states : The golden ratio is the ratio between two segments such that the smaller (be) segment is to the larger segment (ab) as the larger segment (ab) is to the sum of the two segments (ae), or bc/ab = ablac = 0.618.' This proportion system is also used in nature, things like leaves, fruits, sea shells and even the human body are proportioned with the Golden Ratio, for this reason architectural masterpieces like the Pantheon or more common objects like the Apple Ipod have been created by respecting this ratio (Lidwell, 2003). Woodworker and furniture designer called Graham Blackburn in his essay called a guide to good design stated : “Chief among the many paradigms that designers have used—and continue to use—to ensure balance and good proportions in furniture design is the golden ratio”(Blackburn, 2008). Also Blackburn recalled the presence of the golden ratio in nature, saying that the golden ratio has a fundamental importance in all the elements of nature, even the orbits of the planets. That is the reason why the ratio feels right to the eyes of humans, because it affects our reality continuously hence it influences people on a subconscious level (Blackburn, 2008). When balancing flavours in a dish proportioning the ingredients is the key. Corporate Chef Scott Uehlein explained that when in his kitchen a new dish is being created him and his team work on the 5 balance of the flavour by using the same amount of different ingredients. For example if the dish is not sweet enough it means that there is not the right proportions of sweet elements, as an example he talks about traditional italian tomato sauce which uses carrots to balance the sweetness of it, the dish will not taste as sweet as sugar but it will help balancing the tanginess of the tomatoes and the herbs (Uehlein, 2015). Also the australian michelin-star chef called David Thompson talked about Thai cuisine in his book called “Thai Food” .Thompson said that flavours in Thai cuisine are well proportioned between each other, and they are so well proportioned that even an entire dish will be balanced with another one. For example if we will be serve a really spicy curry a mild stir fry and soup will be served with it, in order to balance the whole eating experience (Thompson, 2002). So giving the right proportions to each ingredient in a dish it is vital to bring a good experience to the table. To sum up, balance is important for design because our body tends to react in a better way to well distributed composition or objects. In the same way our senses will feel all the different flavours in a dish and after they will put them in a bigger picture, if the flavours are not very well balanced they will not have enough room to stand out, in the same way a poster that is not very well proportioned will not help the reader to understand all the informations that is trying to give. For these reasons it can be said that the ideas and theories of balance in design are applied for similar reasons in the world of cooking. 1.3 : ​How colours can influence humans and what they choose to eat Colours are a massive part of design, especially when it is trying to sell a product or to show the personality of a certain thing. Colours do not only catch the attention of our sight but also can make people feel in certain way, for example Melanie Alt in her thesis called “Emotional responses to color associated with an advertisement” discussed how important colors are in branding and identity design and how they can influence the audience. She quoted Grossman and Wisenblit which said that colors are used in branding to advertise the qualities of the brand itself (Alt, 2008). Also Eric Danger in his book called “How to use colors to sell” said that the principal functions of colours are catching the attention of the audience but also they work on psychological level because they are able to express things like happiness, warmth or cold, and different other moods (Danger, 1969). So actually colours are able to influence what people thinks and feel. A similar experiment has been conducted by Charles Spence and his team. They showed how our body and mind reacts to certain colours in food. Spencer’s experiment was extremely simple, him and his team took a tasteless and colorless drink and then they added different food colourings, which were tasteless as well, to them. So in the experiment there were eight drinks with eight different colours : green, orange, yellow, blue, red, grey and colorless (Spence, 2010). The results were extremely surprising because the participants tasted different flavours even if the drinks had no flavours at all. For example the green drinks were most often considered Lime flavoured, while red was either raspberry or strawberry, even the colourless drink had a small percentage of vanilla and cream flavoured (15% and 16%) (Spence, 2010). This study shows how people can be influenced by colors and food producers will consider how people reacts to certain colours when making a product. More precisely some colours have a really specific connotation for most of the humans. The guide called “Color Theory for Designers” written by Cameron Chapman for Smashing Magazine analysed the different colours and realised that they communicate different feelings, for example red can communicate anger, but also can indicate importance, warmth and love (Chapman, 2010). This idea of a specific sensation connected to the colour can be find again in food, Natalie Burns-Holland from 6 Queen’s university talked about how food colours can influence the whole perception of food. For example blue is classified as appetite suppressant, this means that our body is highly influenced by this colour in a not positive way, so strong that it can actually convince people not to eat that specific food. The main reason why this happens is because the colour conveys to the brain how that food may be expected to taste (Burns-Holland, 2016). In another experiment by a group scientists in 1970 people eat a steak without the lights on, then when the lights went on again they seen that their steaks were blue, they had been coloured on purpose, and most of the participants felt sick and even vomited (Schlosser, 2001).​ This happens because there are not many blue colored foods in nature, it is a manmade related thing, so the brain thinks that if we would introduce that food in our system we may get food poisoned (Burns-Holland, 2016) . In conclusion, colours have a massive impact on our perceptions. Colours can make us feel happy or sad and they can also tell us if a brand is friendly or not. Designers will use them to give a better idea of what they are trying to express, and also to give a better feeling of the experience that a certain product will bring. In the same way colours influences our perception of food, it can tell us how it may taste and also can help people to identify if the food is safe to eat or not. So since colours affect design and food in the same way a similar approach is taken when using them, a designer will use a colour to make a product more attractive, in the same food producer will use certain colours to make the food more appealing and interesting to the consumers. This shows how this aspect of design theory can be applied to food production. Chapter 2 : Form 2.1 : ​Form follows function The shape or the form of different objects is an important matter in the design world. Generally people ask to themselves why that car has a low profile? Why jeans have a smaller pocket inside the bigger one? Why the roof of the houses in mountain areas are so high and inclined? Of course all these choices in the matter of shape have been taken to accomplish different objectives and functions that are vital for the object itself. Different designers discussed the importance of form in the design world, this idea then became one of the main elements considered in the design universe. Louis Sullivan, an American architect, has spoken about the importance of the form when designing an object in his essay about the office skyscrapers called “Tall office building”. After describing how this type of construction should be structured Sullivan focuses on the theory to follow when taking this type of decisions, he writes :”All things in nature have a shape, that is to say, a form, an outward semblance, that tells us what they are (…) these shapes express the inner life, the native quality of the animal or tree that they present to us”. Sullivan's thoughts show how nature itself when designing our reality took care of creating all the elements with some type of shape that would firstly make them recognizable but also that would help them to express their quality or function. So form follows function was the law for Sullivan, and this helped to create the rules of modern design (Sullivan, 1896 ). One of the main criteria in food design is, as the food design manifesto states, that a food product is designed effectively when it becomes enjoyable in specific context and circumstances. This idea shows how much the shaping of the food is based on the context and on what the producers are trying to achieve with a food product. Another designer called Bruno Munari used another approach to show the importance of shape when designing a product. As a provocation towards the design industry of his time, Munari talked about the shape of furniture in particular the chair. Munari gave a critic to the interior designers that preferred to use their abilities to create some type of chairs that will not improve the function of it but just the way it looked (Munari, 1944). He imagined how it would be to come back from work and sit 7 on an uncomfortable chair; as he stated a chair is made for sitting in comfortable way and relax your body, but designers tend to create some sort of revolutionary shaped object made with the most unique materials, but at the end this chair has nothing more than a cheap (100 lire as he says) chair (Munari. 1944). To state his idea he created and absurd version of a chair which will accomplish some really peculiar and unseen function. The chair is called the Singer Chair and it had a 45° degrees angle which made it completely uncomfortable (fig,4). But there was a specific reason behind its design, Munari created that chair for the landlord that had to deal with a visit from an unwanted guest. So the household would tell them to sit down and have a cup of tea, the guests will sit on the chair and they would have the feeling of going away as soon as possible because the angle of the chair made it extremely uncomfortable. Here it is, an object shaped to perfectly perform a function. By breaking the primary function of the object itself, sitting comfortably, he confirmed how is important to work on the functionality of it more than the look, also he showed how important it is the shape in order to have a specific function . Fig.4 Bruno Munari’s Singer Chair (Zanotta, 1945) 8 In 2005 a 4,000 years old bowl of noodles has been found in an archaeological site in northwest China, confirming that in Asia was common to consume noodles even thousands of years ago (National Geographic, 2005). Jen Lin-Liu, founder of Beijing's Black Sesame Kitchen, traveled from the Silk Road to Rome in order to find the origins of noodles, and all the results have been written in his book called ‘​On the Noodle road: From Bejiing To Rome, with love and pasta​’. One of the most interesting things about the shape of pasta that have been found out by Lin-Liu is about the shape of dumplings. Different countries in Asia share the idea of stuffed sheets of pasta but some researchers have theorized that the shape was born because of the necessity of a type of food that would be easy to cook and transport during wars, but also heavy enough to give energy to the soldiers between the battles. It is also thought that Genghis Khan helped to spread the tradition of dumplings because of his numerous battles during the centuries around Asia, the soldiers would restore their energies by eating portions of dumpling which were pre-made and then cooked on the battlefield. (Lin-Liu, 2013). Jan Tschichold, another important figure in the design universe, talked about the importance of shape in the world of typography and how it changed based on the necessities of the men of the period in which he lived in. Tschichold stated in his book ​The new typography​” wrote in 1928 that men before had to deal with a really inferior number of printed information, for this reason the layout and the shape of a printed product did not have a crucial importance in the end, while the biggest importance was given to the “beauty” of the product (Tschichold, 1928). “The modern man has to absorb every day a mass of printed matter which. whether he has asked for it or not.” ( Tschichold, 1928). This means that men were coming across with a larger number of printed products, that is why he worked to change the staples of typography to create something more efficient for the men of that moment of history, in order to help them to deal with all these informations ( Tschichold, 1928). Tschichold analyzed the importance of a clear typeface to understand better the content presented; he said that the typefaces designed in the victorian age or before were not helping the cause, but they were just able to make the concepts harder to understand because of their decorations (Tschichold, 1928). For this reason he preferred to adopt sans-serif fonts in order to help the understanding of the subject through the use of their simple and clean shapes, so a better shape for a more efficient design product (Tschichold, 1928).Italy has been able to create hundreds of types of pasta and each of them has been designed for different categories of condiments and sauces, even if they are always made of semolina flour, water and sometimes egg, the way that pasta is shaped is based on the dish that will be prepared but also on the necessities of who is going to use it, based on their heritage and location (Stummerer, Hablesreiter. 2009). Paola Antonelli, an Italian designer and architect, studied the different shapes of pasta in her essay called “Design bits” and then in the book “Pasta by design” in order to find a connection between the world of food and the world of design . Antonelli considered pasta one of the biggest examples of this connection because pasta has been able to produce several varieties of derivative design and since the shape and the tools remained the same for centuries all of these design are timeless (Antonelli, 1998). One of the biggest pasta producer in southern Italy called Voiello, uses hydraulic jacks made of bronze that are able to create a more rough surface on the pasta which will help the sauce to stick on it, this technique has been adopted for generations and it is used to create different types of pasta (Stummerer, Hablesreiter. 2009). As Caz Hildebrand & Jacob Kenedy stated in their book “The Geometry of Pasta” this antique technique was used everywhere in Italy but in different ways, based on the necessity of the people but especially on the type of meal that was going to be cooked ( Hildebrand, Kenedy. 2010). For example it is possible to buy thicker pasta that can stick better to thicker sauces, because people in the south of Italy tended to create more rustic sauces(Fig. 5), or the pasta dough could be mixed with eggs, because people in the north of Italy had higher standards of living and they could afford eggs (Fig.6) (Hildebrand, Kenedy. 2010). By and large, it has been showed first the importance of form and function in design, then it has been 9 showed how it has the same importance into food making, this is a really important feature that creates the bases of every design creation but also of every dish that is going to be eaten. Fig. 5. Penne pasta are used to make Penne alla Norma, typical dish from Sicily, south italy. Made with a thick aubergine sauce. Penne work perfectly because of their stripes, which keep the sauce on the pasta. (Barilla academy, 2015) Fig 6 : Tagliatelle are a typical type of pasta from center-north Italy. Its recipe contains eggs which make it a really rich in flavour. (Rana, 2016) 2.2 : ​Texture and Consistency - how they enhance taste and design Texture is one of the basic principles in different branches of design, and not least in the design of food. As the Chef Mario Batali, one of the founders of Eataly, a worldwide chain of italian food centres, states: “The single world ‘crispy’” will sell a restaurant dish quicker than any number of clever adjectives” (Batali, 2002). But what is texture? In his book “Principles of Form and Design” 10 Wucius Wong identifies some different types of textures : one is tactile texture, which can be perceived with our hands and not only with our eyes (Wong, 1993, pp.122). He also points out that texture can be natural, when the material keeps its original texture, but that such natural texture can be modified to obtain a new result, for example when paper is crumpled (Wong, 1993, pp 122-123). So generally it can be said that texture, in the design world, is how the surface is apprehended by a person through sight and touch. But why is texture such an important element in design? Ellen Lupton talked about texture in her book called ​Graphic Design the new basics​ she states that textures are important for designers because they add details that help to define some type of mood in a better way. She suggests that the beauty of texture is when the contrast between different types is made apparent, because this helps to amplify the qualities of both through contrast with one another (Lupton, 2008, pp 54). In the world of food texture is used in the same way. One of the main stars of Californian cuisine, Daniel Patterson writes in his book “Coi : Stories and recipes” that textures are a “delivery mechanism for flavour”. For example, he notes that a thicker sauce has more length because it stays more time on the tongue, but the main technique used to enhance texture by Patterson is to juxtapose different textures on the same plate. An example that he gives are duck tongues, and since they are soft and gelatinous the chef will pair them with a crisp gem salad, within the contrast the two very different texture will find their own dimension (Patterson, 2013) TIC Gums is a research centre for texture in food production. According to the company’s vice president of research and development, Matthew Patrick, texture has a vital importance when food is being produced. For example, texture can influence the perception of the food flavour; it can guide our taste buds and it can make the food taste more savory or more sweet without the addition of salt or sugar (Scott-Thomas, 2013). This means that people who cannot consume large amounts of these substances will be able to appreciate the food without loss of flavour. ​Textural characteristics are not only important in graphic design. Fashion design also understands the importance of texture, especially in its use of textiles​. I​ n their book​ Fashion Design: Process, Innovation and Practice​ Kathryn McKelvey and Janine Munslow discuss features of texture in fashion design, stating that textures are an important part of our experience when wearing clothes, not only because of the different sensations that can be felt, but also how texture can change the way clothes behave on human bodies ​(McKelvey​ & ​ Munslow, 2003, p.49) ​. Certainly our bodies can behave in different ways as a result of contact with different textures. Five experts in dental care and oral surgery conducted a study about the texture and the thickness of food while it is being chewed. They found out that changing the texture and the thickness of the food will influence the way our mouth and teeth will feel hardness. For example if the food is soft but it is cut in a thick piece our mind and our mouth will think that that piece of food is harder than is actually is and so it will be chewed in a specific way​ (​Steele, Catriona, et al.​ 2015)​. Another study, conducted by Gisla Gneich, a perceptual psychologist from Bremen, on taste and texture found that a person’s perception of the texture and the consistency of food amounts to around 60% of their tasting experience (Gneich, 2002). Our mouth has an enormous number of sensors to detect pressure, temperature and pain, and so when some type of texture comes in contact with our tongue we will feel it straight away (Gneich, 2002). As a result, our brain is able to detect mostly from its texture if the product is fresh or not, for example, fresh crisps versus stale ones, and for this reason it is a very important component of our tasting (Gneich, 2002). Since texture is so important, food producers and designers take it into consideration when making a product. 11 In 2012 a textile design studio called Pinaki Studios teamed up with the Dutch chocolate brand Chocolàt to create a food design project in which texture and surface are everything. Coming from a textile background the design studio created thin chocolate sheets and then used typical techniques from the fabric industry such as pleating (Fig.7), creasing or embossing to create a series of edible products each giving a peculiar tasting experience based on the different texture proposed (Pinaki, 2012) This can be considered a meeting point between food production and textile design over the matter of texture. In summary, texture is a significant element of design because it can help people to better understand the qualities of a design object, especially when two contrasting textures are placed in close relationship. Textures can be employed to help the flavours of a dish to stand out. Texture is also important to people’s appreciation of food, as if there is no resistance to our teeth eating will be a lot less enjoyable. Food makers and designers use the textures of food to fully involve our senses and to give a more complete taste experience. Fig 7 (Pinaki Studio, 2012) 12 Chapter 3 : Approach 3.1 : ​The artist as a chef and the chef as an artist The core concepts of creativity have long been shared between the culinary world and the world of art and design. Different artists and designers during the centuries dealt with food within their works, either creating new meals or by revolutionising the existing ones of their period. On the other hand some chefs around the world have been considered as artists because of the the way they approach cooking and style their dishes. Leonardo Da Vinci, for example, gave enormous importance to food. In fact among all the different notes written by Da Vinci that have been found, a large number of them talk about food. Da Vinci wrote a large quantity of recipes such as Snail soup and stuffed dormouse (Routh, 1987. Pp. 127, 143), but he also wrote about how people should deal with food. For example at what time to have lunch, that the meals should be well cooked and of simple ingredients and to not lay on the stomach after a meal. Da vinci, during his time at Ludovico Sforza’s court, spent countless hours in the royal kitchen (Routh, 1987. p 68). He would documented how the kitchen was designed, explaining how efficient it was by describing in detail all the elements of it, from the kitchenware to the architecture (Routh, 1987). An example closer to us in time of art and food melting together is Marinetti and the Futurists. Marinetti in his ​Modernist Cooking Manifesto ​declares war to pasta, by saying that this type of food contributed to make italians weak and lazy (Marinetti, 1989). For him food needed to be an explosive and dynamic experience, “Simultaneous and changing bites” that’s what Marinetti wanted in cooking. In the Modernist cookbook Marinetti describes different types of meals and all of them were designed to bring as much pleasure to the senses (Marinetti, 1989). So for example between two dishes, a special odour would have been dispersed with the use of fans, just to intensify the smelling experience of the diners at the table (Marinetti, 1930). Another interesting example is the tactile dinner party. The party would start into a dark room where the guest would enter dressed with some pyjamas. These pyjamas were covered with different materials, and the guest had to choose their dinner companion according to the texture that they felt in the dark room (Marinetti, 1989). Then the dinner would have been served in bowls covered with rough tactile materials, some of these dishes like the ‘Tactile vegetable garden’ could only be eaten without the help of the hands, in order to establish a direct contact between the flavours and the texture of the vegetables (Marinetti, 1930). On the other hand is possible to find different chefs that treat their dishes as if they were pieces of art. Tom Wolfe, for example, is a chef that uses cooking to produce different art pieces. Wolfe is famous especially for the creation of food based installation in his exhibition (Wolfe, 2016) . Most of his projects have a participatory soul, since he wants to break the standard boundaries of art and design he let’s the audience be part of the artwork (Wolfe, 2016). One of his most famous exhibitions is called Inside the cake ​(Fig.8) and during this exhibition the public was asked to interact actively with the different installation, all of them were made out of sponge cake covered in glaze, and the audience could go inside each of them and taste the artwork itself (Wolfe, 2016) . Wolfe is also famous for his collaborations with the world of fashion design. During these fashion shows the models wear different food trays, which are shaped as if they were bags or hats, on these trays Wolfe’s canapes are served; then when the show is finished the models leave the runaway and they walk around to serve the canapes, which are still on the trays (Wolfe, 2016). 13 Fig 8 : Tom Wolfe’s exhibition Inside the cake. (Wolfe) To summarise, food and design are two worlds that meld together more than is thought, it is possible to see different artists dealing with food as if they were part of the culinary world, by dealing directly with recipes and cuisine related ideas. On the other hand is becoming more and more common that chefs develop an artistic side through their dishes, and it can become so developed that they start to unify the disciplines of food and arts and design. 3.2 : ​The M.A.Y.A process Raymond Loewy was one of the most brilliant minds in industrial design during the 90’s. He was the creator of the M.A.Y.A design principle. M.A.Y.A stands for “Most advanced, yet acceptable”, this theory was based on the idea that the public is never ready to some major changes in their products, hence if the product is too advanced the audience will not be able to appreciate it. Thus smaller changes need to be done during a period of time to get the consumers used to novelty . A good example of M.A.Y.A design comes from Apple. In 2001 the first Ipod was launched and 14 during the years it changed different features, for example it went from having different buttons to have just one, the screen enlarged and the overall shape results to be more streamlined compared to the first version (Friis Dam, 2015). The designers at Apple applied the M.A.Y.A principles, during the years their product gradually changed, in order to give to their consumers the most advanced product that their mindset could accept (Friis Dam, 2015). On the other hand, Apple had a major failure with another product which was too advanced for its period. The product is in fact the Newton tablet. This product was launched in 1993 and it was one of the first examples of tablet and digital assistant. Unfortunately for Apple the sales were extremely low and they had to stop producing the tablet after only 5 years (Friis Dam, 2015). This happened because people in that moment were not familiar with such an advanced product, it was some sort of shock for the consumers. It is common to see the presence of the M.A.Y.A design process into food as well. For example, Dr. Francesca Zampollo, the founder of the food design online school, went on a trip in Seoul to find the most unusual beers in the South Korean city. Zampollo tasted cotton candy beers, ice cream made with beer, or beer mixed with different types of fruits or flavours, then she explained that all these bars were applying the M.A.Y.A design principles. She states :”People particularly enjoy when they find a novelty that they can still understand (...) in this case I understand beer in a completely new way!” (Zampollo, 2016). So the concept of beer stays the same but just with a small new addition to make it new and interesting, but without shocking too much the audience. Ferran Adrià, a spanish chef, became famous because his approach towards cooking was highly inspired by art and design. Started as a dishwasher in the restaurant El Bulli in Barcelona, he then became head chef of the same restaurant and after some years, in 2013, he was the first chef to have his own exhibition at the Somerset house. Adrià says that cooking is the first creative discipline because men have the necessity to eat, and all his dishes start with a philosophy or a message, and it is considered successful if the new dish opens a new path of exploration (Beard, Silver. 2011) For example one of the most famous elements of his cooking philosophy is deconstruction, defined by him as when the ingredients of a dish are transformed along with the texture but the dish itself is still keeping its own essence, even if its appearance is different now (Carlin, 2006). Adrià tends to apply the M.A.Y.A process to add novelty to his dishes without changing what the dish really is. For example his dished called “Vanishing Ravioli” (Fig.9) is the perfect example of M.A.Y.A. Adrià makes ravioli, which is a type of stuffed pasta, without using the classic semolina pasta base, instead he uses obulato, a transparent film made with potato starch and soy, largely used in Japan. The novelty in this dish is that obulato has the capacity to dissolve almost instantly when in contact with water, so when they reach the palate the raviolis will open and reveal their filling in a quick burst of flavour. The concept is the same, stuffed pasta with different ingredients, but has been changed and made new in a way that people is still able to accept. 15 Fig 9 : Vanishing Ravioli (Molecular recipes, 2012) To sum up, the M.A.Y.A process has been created to create advanced products without shocking the consumers too much. Even if it has been created within the world of industrial design it can be easily applied to the world of food production in order to create new dishes which still keep their essence. Conclusion To conclude, it has been showed how the world of design and the world of food are meld together. Food makers tend to use and consider elements and rules that are part of design theory. They consider the importance of the senses and how they could improve the audience’s experience. The shape, the colour and the texture of food is as well an important matter during the production of it, and it is treated in a very similar way in design, it is vital in both of the world to consider how these elements can help to shape a certain experience for the consumers. Lastly it has been shown how food influenced different designers and artists and how design has influenced chefs, some of these chefs use a design based approach such as the M.A.Y.A process. It is important to say that since these two worlds share quite a large number of ideas and ways of making and thinking, food should be considered as a subject matter of design. But it is important to not get confused with packaging or food photography, which are already largely recognised into the 16 industry of design, the actual making of food is what should start gaining importance. Different companies which produce food are already hiring food designers to improve their products but the institution still not add food making to their enormous list of subjects. Hopefully these art and design institution will start considering this deep connection and food making will officially be considered a matter of design, so that both design and food will be able to learn from each other in order to reach new improvements in both of the areas. Bibliography Alt, M, 2008. ​Emotional response to color associated with an advertisement​. Masters in education. 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Available at: https://pictures.woont.com/furniture/0/Zanotta/2/Singer/Zanotta-Singer-156493.XL.jpg​ [Accessed 20 October 2016]. Fig 5 : Academia Barilla, ​Pasta alla norma​ [ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.academiabarilla.it/ricette/sicilia/pasta-alla-norma.aspx​ [Accessed 20 November 2016]. Fig 6 : Pasta Rana,, ​Tagliatelle alla bolognese​ [ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.rana.it/cms/uploads/ricetta/a2b4361b663400691c080180277f72e1.jpg​ [Accessed 20 October 2016]. Fig 7 ; Pinaki studios, (2012), ​Edible surfaces​ [ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.pinakieditions.com/edible-surfaces/​ [Accessed 20 October 2016]. Fig 8: Tom Wolfe, ​Inside the cake​ [ONLINE]. Available at: https://tomwolfeproduktions.com/wp-content/gallery-bank/gallery-uploads/o_1aobkf2c41k3gbblpdhd otmldm.jpg​ [Accessed 18 October 2016]. Fig 9 : Molecular recipes, (2012), ​Vanishing ravioli​ [ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.molecularrecipes.com/wp-content/uploads/surprises/xtransparent-ravioli-trio.jpg,q93afc3. pagespeed.ic.1QPU6e0cwU.jpg​[Accessed 18 October 2016]. 19 View publication stats Dedicated to my parents, Filomena and Clemente, that made all of this possible. Without you i would have never had this chance. Thank you. Giovanni La Marca BA Graphic Design 2017 Camberwell College of Arts University of the arts London 20