Senior Degree Project: Eat Your Grub

Most people don't think about the process by which food travels from farm to table. For the most part, eating is an absent-minded activity. We eat primarily to get full, but by making deliberate choices about what we eat, we can turn our consumption of food into a healthy, enjoyable experience.

How can information design, incorporated into various mediums, encourage college students to eat seasonal, local foods through understanding the subsequent financial and health benefits?

The end product of my semester-long degree project: a cookbook that focuses on fast easy meals in addition to explaining basic fruits and vegetables one may come across.

Degree Project--> Mid-Semester Semation

I have spent a good majority of this first half of the semester researching, and trying to figure out how to reach an audience of college students some of whom may not be ready to listen to my message. I have had a difficult time pulling myself away and looking at my project from the perspective of someone who doesn't know anything about the subject. Since I am one who already cooks, and buys from the farmers market, etc, it has been difficult to understand the mindset of those who don't think like I do.

I began my experiments thinking about interaction: where/how is my audience going to see this message, and what are they going to take away from it? These first experiments: a reusable grocery bag, a poster, menu planner, seasonal info cards, seemed like good ideas, if you are into that sort of thing already. But...ultimately there was a disconnect between these experiments and the core of my message: to get college students to cook with fresh, whole ingredients. From a Facebook survey I created, I gathered that the majority of students don't cook due to lack of time and money. The resulting problem is not just lack of time, money, or skill, but lack of readily available information.

I still want to incorporate the menu planner if I can but my "solution" became a cookbook that would showcase the four seasons, everything one would need to know about fruits and vegetables, and quick, healthy recipes to tie it all together. I felt it needed to be more than a book, and so I decided to would also make some short videos on how to make small dishes, or even something as simple as cooking eggs. After I figure out the structure of the book, I am going to begin brainstorming how that structure can inform the format for the videos.

Spatial Ex.--> KC Auto Show

Practical

The description of everything the car has to offer economically such as EPA fuel estimates, safety ratings, pricing, etc.

Poetic

These old cars and accompanying personas were fenced off in the middle of the floor at the entrance to the auto show. Are they trying to preserve/protect the "ideal" image of who should be driving these shiny relics? And what is a business man doing with a Beetle?

Persuasive

After driving a Volvo for three years in high school, I know this statement to be true. The car drives and feels like a tank it is so heavy. Could it possibly be b/c of the 8 airbags?

Spatial Ex.--> The Museum of Anthropology barricade

In response to Arthur Erickson's vision of incorporating native architecture into the MOA building, I decided to do this visually by mimicking the art forms of the Northwest Coast Indians. The columns are representative of totem poles both stylistically and with their size, reaching a height of 30 feet. Red and black are the most common colors in native art because they were the easiest to produce without artificial dyes.

Degree Proj.--> Food Photography

Photographs of food I took for the beginning of my cookbook prototyping

Food for Thought

"Does working in a creative field zap you, or make you more likely to pick up a paintbrush or camera?"

Plagued at many times with being burnt out creatively, this post from The Pitch Design Union hit the nail on the head.

The bottom line? We have to learn to manage both...creating art outside of work fuels the creativity at work.

Spatial Ex.--> The Museum of Anthropology at UBC

The Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, designed by Arthur C. Erickson 1971

"The Museum, located on a very impressive campus site overlooking the Strait of Georgia and the North Shore Mountains, has both academic and public functions. Among its unique features is the visible storage of all artifacts. This eliminates the need to rotate collections from public display to private storage. It also recreates several Indian villages around a pond on the Museum site including vegetation consistent with their original locale.
The focal point of the Museum is the high ceiling Great Hall housing massive totem poles. Large glass windows, towering up to forty feet in height, provide an unobstructed view and enable the totem poles to be seen in daylight against a natural exterior setting. The rest of the galleries house collections of Indian art and other tribal art. An experimental gallery is provided for travelling and student exhibits and for display experiments."

quoted from arthur erickson.com