The Spanish food design studio Papila was founded in 2009 as, “the first design studio specialized in the food sector.” Over the last seven years, the three partners—Alberto Arza, Eva Garcia and Roberto Cortes—have been delving into the “investigation, design and innovation process which revolves around everything in the dining experience,” Arza tells us. Although we can think of a number of other design studios working in the space before 2009, Papila’s interdisciplinary projects across product, exhibition, graphic and food design led them to accumulate a wealth of knowledge surrounding the origins of food. From this bank of information, the designers were inspired to put together a fun and informative publication about the history of food, Food History, now live on Kickstarter.
From fire, farming to fermentation, the book takes a chronological and graphic approach to explaining, “how the relationship between food and human beings evolved throughout history.”
Did you know that the cooking of food changed our bodies? Did you know that we are the only species who consumes other animal´s breast milk? Did you know that the expression honeymoon comes from the Roman tradition of leaving honey for newlyweds to boost their energy.? Did you know that oranges were originally green? Did you know that the sandwich was created when the Earl of Sandwich asked for meat to be put between two slices of bread to continue playing cards? Or that the can opener was invented 50 years after the can?
Using bold black and white icons, the book is intended to be engaging and educational, a publication for food lovers of all ages. “Food history is human history,” Arza tells us. Through the book, we learn that to know our food history is to know ourselves.
Food History is in it’s final 2-days of their crowdfunding campaign. Help them reach their goal of producing both an English and Spanish language edition for the book.
