Friday, August 12, 2011

Food Label Design & News21's The Ration


Trying to catch up with food news lost to me thanks to the vortex of finishing/graduating school and brain-bruising by the bar. Seems like there are more things going on around food politics discussion/coverage though realistically and practically perhaps, plus c'est la même chose. See, my half-empty glasses are always on.

ANYWAYS, it is nice to see some of that discussion make it more into the public eye and such. Thanks to the interconnected webs, I discovered News 21's site, The Ration, all sexy with nice design, visuals and video. I haven't had that much time to poke around and read thoroughly but what I've seen looks good and not superficial. Yay depth! The site is a project on food & health by the UC Berkeley Grad School of Journalism and students from U. of Missouri, Harvard, and City University, London.

Recently, News21 also teamed up with GOOD for a project called "Rethink the Food Label" to make labels more accessible, informative, and inspirational for consumers. The rethinking could use the existing components of current labels or pull in other social and environmental informational characteristics such as the environment and food justice.

Salon/Imprint had a nice little blurb about the design contest & its winner, Renee Walker. Walker decided to make a color-coded food group key, so that "brighter colors represent what's good for you and grayer colors show additives and preservatives. . . . So the brighter the color, the healthier the food." I kind of love the idea of bringing in color to do what the food pyramid tried to do - to send a visual message to consumers about what would be a healthier food choice, and color seems an efficient/immediate way to influence emotion and decision. I also like the visual ratio so you can tell what is a more "whole" food and have an idea of the ingredient amounts in relation to each other, instead of resorting to imaginary numbers when you read an ingredient list.

Have you seen any good news sites or projects regarding food politicky stuff? Comment it up!