Any designers here now working in or contemplating the pre-packaged food industry as an alternative to landfill-ready plastic trinkets and household furnishings?
Used to laugh at the suggestion myself, but it’s huge, looks pretty recession-proof, and talk about a green, guilt-free industry here!
Packaging, display, “product” design for all the senses, anyone?
Oh, I almost forgot, you’d still have to gladly suffer a category of “food formulation engineers” in that line of work too.
I am working on a chair made of frosted corn flakes, should be good!
What’s worse:
Designing junk nobody needs that will end up in a landfill
Designing junk food nobody needs that will make its users fat and unwell, then covering it in packaging that will end up in a landfill
Any food that requires the servcies of an engineer at any step between farm and mouth probably doesn’t belong in your body.
Green and guilt-free? Not really.
can u post that picture of that edible delish- chair when its finished?
so curious!!
Clearly, many here wouldn’t appreciate seeing others happily eating, slurping or smelling their designs but you truly are missing out on very interesting and growing employment opportunities in the billion-dollar processed foods and food packaging industry where thousands of new, highly-researched big-budget products are launched every year.
For better or for worse, convenience, lack of time and health concerns are pushing manufacturers to conceive increasingly more sophisticated mass produced food items in all categories. The usual design challenges are still there - problem-solving, “materials”, manufacturing, form, color, function, handling, safety, disposal, and more. Chocolates and candy are still molded, pasta is extruded, and so on.
After all, people do eat way more often than they buy digital cameras, and they always will, making any design work related to the food industry a relatively secure, if mostly unexplored work niche by designers themselves.
Italy is probably the best example today of originally designed food sold in a mind-boggling product variety.
This is not about corn flakes chairs or other such idiocies, it is about the packaged foods you and I already buy every day. And many of them look like you-know-what before you even open the box. There is little evidence true design thinking as we know it ever makes it into these products sold in the millions, save for the occasional smart packaging and graphics.
If you are a student, remind your professors product designers are legally allowed to affect anything manufactured by industry - edible or not, and school may unfortunately sell you short on the true number of real-world creative opportunities out there.
Used to be that open-mindedness was a prerequisite to even enter design school. Not sure this is still the case.
look up Marti Guixe.