How a food design project works

How does a food design project work?

Like any design project, with one difference that changes everything: the material is alive, it degrades, and it gets eaten. That forces you to project time, not only form.

The process I use has six phases. They are not a ritual, they are a way of not fooling yourself.

1. Research

Before touching anything, understand the system. Where the food comes from, who produces it, what it means culturally, what gets wasted, what gestures surround it. This is where you read, ask, and go to the places.

It is the phase clients want to skip, and the one that decides whether the project has something to say or only something to show.

2. The question

Every project rests on a question you can state in one sentence. If you cannot, there is no project: there is a decoration commission.

A good question is concrete and uncomfortable. Not how do we make something beautiful with fruit, but what if the abundance we celebrate at the table is exactly what exhausts the soil.

3. Material exploration

Test things. What sugar does as it crystallises on a string, how long a bonsai survives inside a piece, how water behaves in a closed circuit, what happens when ceramic contains lead.

Half the project is discovered in this phase, and it is almost never what was planned.

4. Prototype

Build the smallest version that can already be lived. Not a mock-up: something someone can eat, touch or walk through.

This is where the crafts come in. Ceramicists, glassblowers, cooks, technicians. Food design is almost never done alone.

5. Testing with people

Put it in front of people and watch without intervening. What they do before it is explained, where they hesitate, what they put in their mouth first, what they talk about afterwards.

What people do almost never matches what they say they would do.

6. Adjustment and documentation

Correct with what you learned, and document properly. In a field whose material disappears as it is consumed, documentation is not an extra: very often it is all that is left of the piece.

How long does a food design project take?

It depends on scope. A single piece or a one-off activation, six to ten weeks. A full restaurant concept, four to eight months. Research is the phase most often underestimated and the one that most determines the result.

Should you prototype with real food?

You have to. It is the only way to know how the material behaves: how it cools, how it spills, how it smells after ten minutes, how it stains. A prototype on screen says nothing about any of that.

What roles does a project need?

Almost always three: someone who projects, someone who cooks and someone who produces. Depending on the commission, ceramicists, glassblowers, engineers or materials technicians join in. Working alone in food design is rare, and it usually turns out worse.