6-course design presentation
How food, haute cuisine, and movies about chefs helped me improve my design agency
We eat every day, but only sometimes excellent and exciting food. The design is about the same story. Every day, you need something in the form of McDonald’s, where everything is quickly and according to a single standard, and 5–6 times a year, you need something unique, like visiting a gourmet restaurant. It is how I describe the design that we create for customers. And this is what perfectly characterizes what needs to be sold and at what price.
Fine dining restaurants
I visited gourmet restaurants in Copenhagen, Istanbul, Prague, Venice, Vilnius, and other cities. I watched all the Chef’s Table episodes and a few dozen more movies about chefs. I studied books about Noma haute cuisine and recipe collections. All this prompted me to think critically and then take action.
The first is the number of ingredients. If you look at most of the dishes on the gourmet restaurant menu, you will see a lot of ingredients that are difficult to find. And the most important thing is our technique of working with these ingredients. That’s how the idea of creating your library of ingredients (tables, mockups, layouts, paper, packaging, etc.) was born. The larger and more interesting the library is, the more likely employees will find exciting solutions.
While attending OFFF’23, I listened to a lecture by Brain Collins about branding. On one slide was their library, where employees could dig through books to look for ideas and get inspired. Various libraries work great in creative companies. The main thing is to surround people in your company with them appropriately.
If we are talking about techniques for working with ingredients, I added events at the agency where employees could work with clay or draw. Most importantly, every year, the agency has several developments where you need to work with your hands with metal, wood, glass, etc. All this allows you to expand the toolkit.
The second is the highest quality in the presentation of the dish. Each dish is a work of art. You always want to consider it before eating. It was the presentation that I adopted. Every detail in the project is essential; you need to talk about it and not think the client will figure it out himself — rounded corners, font, elements, metaphors, analogies with the company’s products, etc. We carefully build presentations to show the client all the project details. The second part is to leave the client with working files on the image of the kitchen organization in a Michelin-starred restaurant. Everything is clear and understandable so that you can use the documents, not just put them on the shelf.
The third is the search for ideas around. Chefs are looking for ideas for their menus in natural landscapes, in stories, in the records of their grandmothers and mothers, etc. I took this as a basis for finding ideas, as one of the exercises we use at the agency. Walking, free drawing, drawing in pairs, visiting libraries, chaotic reading, etc., are used to find ideas.
Chef’s Table
Chef’s Table is about leadership, about one person who can unite others around him and cope with difficulties to create a product of the highest quality. In many episodes, I saw with trepidation that it was told about suppliers, products, and how important those people are who allow you to cook the best dishes in the world.
This helped me better understand how valuable supplier relationships are. Moreover, this is about more than just relationships but general development. If your supplier develops and you help him with this, then as a result, you will receive more and more high-quality products every year. And most importantly, you will always have a well-honed production system without interruptions. No failures. No surprises.
Books about cooking and design
If you pick up a book at least once, for example, about the Noma restaurant, immediately pay attention to the design, photos, layout, and how everything is harmonious. It can’t be any other way. But I had another idea — systematization of my works. All cookbooks are an archive of the best works of a restaurant or chef. This allows everyone who works in the restaurant to see the result of their work. In my case, this results from the entire team’s work. And it will not just disappear into the archives but will be fixed. I started making presentations in the first version, but they will be in print. After all, printing has a higher value than any PDF file.
My research and comparison of the cuisine in the restaurant and the kitchen in the design agency continues. I am sure that soon I will mark something else, and I will be able to find a solution to implement it in my agency.
