Ive always been interested in the analogy between cooking and design so I was really excited to see that the August issue of Print Magazine is titled “The Food Issue”. It is dedicated to the current trends in what consumers find most important in their food choices and what they find appetizing in current times.

There are so many parallels between designing and cooking. Food can look delectable but taste horrible or the opposite. Design can look great but serve no function to its user. Both art forms are done for someone else’s “consumption” if you will. You cook and design for a certain audience or for certain tastes based on many factors. If you add too many spices or too many ingredients that don’t work together it ends up a big unpalatable mess. Both arts are a delicate balance.

Now-a-days there is growing concern over whether the food we consume is safe and won’t give us e coli or salmonella poisoning or if it has been genetically modified and will cause problems later in life. Today the beauty of food is more about where it came from and if it local, safe, and organic, not how fancy your radish flower looks. Food magazines are more likely to do a spread about backyard BBQ’s with seasonal local produce and the farmers that produced it as opposed to a spread of pretty pictures of  highly styled plates of food. The trend is to show how organic, wholesome, and easy the food is. From the earth to your plate with the least amount of fuss as possible.

Again, it’s easy to see how you can find inspiration for design in everything, including food trends. Organic, easy and wholesome food is just that; simple ingredients that taste good and are good for you. The current trend in web design is all about usability; how the “consumer” uses the web site and interacts with the information presented. The clearer and more organic, or simple the better. Its all about getting the user to interact dynamically in their own unique way with what you have designed for them to use. Web design is no longer about how pretty what you see on your screen looks, it is about showing the user how the information can be manipulated by them to suit their likings.