Food Is Fiction: Stories on Food and Design

A look at the marketing, packaging and design choices that transform food into products

On a daily basis, tens of thousands of food products fight for our attention in supermarkets. It’s a miracle that we manage to choose what we want from the overwhelming supply. Designers play a crucial role in this. They package food and transform it into products that appeal, inform and seduce us. The designer is the indispensable mediator between the producer and us, the consumer. As artisans of alienation, designers make up stories, create illusions and dream images.

Food Is Fiction places these stories in the context of the rise of the food industry and contemplating the future of food. Drawing on historical and contemporary visual material ranging from early advertising for classic brands such as Van Houten and Van Nelle to "food pornography," astronaut food and gastrophysics, Linda Roodenburg (author of the Rotterdam Cook Book) shows how the designer’s language conforms to the spirit of the times, uses stereotypes and prejudices or anticipates social changes.