Hasta La Ideas

A “food futurologist” forcasted Day 2 of the International Conference on Designing Food and Designing For Food at at London Metropolitan University. Dr. Morgaine Gaye, a trend forecaster-strategist-foodie-academic-and-sometimes-television-personality, offered a stellar keynote lecture that explained her process of looking at food and eating from a social, cultural, economic, trend, branding and geo-political perspective. She discussed the roles of taste and texture in food design, posing questions about the difference between the function and the pleasure of food as it relates to preference, mouthfeel and perception.

This kicked off a day of lectures and project presentations that included reflections on everything from shopping mall food courts to “Nasal Nostalgia”. Fabio Scotto Di Clemente spoke on the power of synesthesia in consumer experiences. Synesthesia, he argued, is a kind of full body storytelling in which all the elements of the narrative connect through the human senses, thereby rendering it more powerful than most story-telling devices. He hypothesized that in response to an ever-more demanding consumer, the relationship of food to synesthesia could offer clues in creating the kind full-sensory stimulation that contemporary buyers crave.

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