An excerpt from my conversation with Lisa Smith, ECD of Jones Knowles Ritchie NYC:

“So, what do you want to do with this interview? What are you hoping to learn, and—”

Shelby: So, I'm a designer. I'm not planning to change my career. I'm not going to take, like, an unpaid internship in the food industry; I've been working for six years. And I think enrolling in the program was sort of trying to claim some autonomy over the kind of work that I do.

This project is interviewing three different people whose work that I admire. The people I chose kind of cross the threshold between food and design. You're sort of right in the middle. I talked to André Mack who was the sommelier at Per Se, but then he quit to be a winemaker in Oregon. And then he opened up a restaurant, then a provision store, then a bakery and a wine store and a design studio where he designs wine labels and merch.

Lisa: Wow, that’s quite a life story.

S: Yeah, and it's really cool to talk to someone who isn't formally trained in design, but he has these creative ideas and wants to put them out there. And this was the easiest way to do it.

And then I interviewed my friend Noah. He's kind of a designer's designer. You know, baseline grid on everything. Everything is very beautiful, very minimal, very considered. He has this freelance studio where he designs books mostly, and he runs it like a record label. He covers the production costs, and then as soon as they hit that, he and the artists he collaborates with split the remainder of the profits. It's a really interesting model because, you know, he's exploring an interest through collaborations without necessarily making it his life.

So, I'll be making a website, and then turning it into, like, textural conversations with audio clips and video clips and imagery, trying to explore what it might look like to merge food and design. And how deep do I have to get into food? Or, you know, how far away can I stay but still be involved?

L: That's really interesting. And I think food is such a ripe area in terms of, like, people come back to what food is, and the simplicity of it, and the core nature of it. But then there's also the technology of food, and how we feed our world. And I think I loved Chobani because of that. I could imagine, actually, somewhere like Chobani being a great fit for someone like you. I even think about their incubator and all the different food brands like Kettle & Fire, the broth company, or Misfits or Willie's Superbrew.

I got to learn so much about other types of foods, too, just by doing the innovation program. We would teach as part of the innovation program that they were doing at Chobani. But just to see different food brands and their stories and where they come from, and it's incredible. And I think like Hamdi is doing, like, incubator food groups on brands from Turkey. Or he’s doing people with purpose. There was somebody who bought saffron from where they were, in a war zone. And then they've made a whole company around it. It's just, it's a storytelling business, really, food is. 

S: Yeah, and you know, I'm a good designer. I could apply to work at companies that focus on food, but I also want to be sure that I'm not going in with a half-baked idea of what will actually help in the food system. So, maybe getting this degree isn’t totally necessary, but I'm interested in learning about all the different aspects and making sure that whatever work I do create keeps a systemic view in mind, instead of just making it look nice. 

L: Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's the key. We're not painters and decorators. If there's an idea and a purpose behind what we're doing, that's what I think we live for. So, but anyway I do have to jump now, but it was awesome to talk to you.