Food design is becoming more popular by the day, google it, and you will find thousands of results about plating and designing beautiful dishes. That creates confusion. The word ‘food design’ is being used in a sense that it has nothing to do with plating, food photography, food styling and other similar subjects. The Domus Editor recently came out with its newest edition of “Il Cucchiaio d’Argento”, titled “Food Design: basi, tecniche, ricette” (eng. basics, techniques, recipes). I didn’t read the book, but the title and the index alone make it very clear that it talks about cooking, delicious recipes and how to plate them originally and gorgeously. The book “A Scuola di Food Design” has the same problem. As a beginner, it was the first book I read to try and learn more about food design and was presented with rules of balance on a plate, geometries, volumes, shapes.
I am not saying that this is not an exciting and valuable topic. I just believe that the wrong use of terms often leads to misunderstandings. Maybe, instead of calling these practices food design, they should use “plate design” or “food styling”. Wouldn’t that make things easier? In this fight of names, the online course platform Domestika.org recently changed the name of one of their plating courses from ‘food design’ to ‘food styling’ – a small victory that was made possible also due to a warning by the designer Francesca Zampollo on her Instagram account. Yet, the problem is still here.
