Anatomy of Design

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ANATOMY OF DESIGN

It doesn’t take a marketing sexpert to know that sex and food sell—each often

by itself but also in tandem. The unbridled debauchery during the famous eating

scene in Stanley Kubrick’s bawdy film Barry Lyndon is vivid evidence of the

time-honored symbiotic relationship between these two essential life forces,

which when well prepared and executed are feasts for the famished.

Recently, however, pundits have argued that for many of us entering

late middle age, good food is perhaps more sought after than good sex (isn’t

the Food Network, after all, food-lovers’ porn?). And while this claim has yet to

be scientifically substantiated, anecdotally speaking, this is indeed an age when

it is possible to be gourmet and gourmand in both areas, and the interplay

between sex and food today is as routine as in 200 B.C., when the Roman god

of wine and intoxication, Bacchus, was having his fun.

Which is one clue to why graphic designers appear more obsessed

with these themes than ever before. Despite the rise of puritanical

fundamentalism, the mass media—responding to “the will of the people”—have

pushed the boundaries of convention and acceptability to such an extent that

sex (and sexuality) is no longer taboo. Of course, there are limits to social

tastes and mores, but eroticism, which was long a subtle presence in late-

twentieth-century advertising and graphic design, can now be overtly displayed

in many, and not always elegant, ways. In addition to innuendo, shock has

emerged from the underground. Such formerly unmentionable topics as

sadomasochism, ménages à trois, lesbianism, and homosexuality are acceptable

images and references for popular consumption in all kinds of fashion and

cultural media. Adding food to these and mainstream eroticism is not merely

garnish but a key ingredient.

The poster for Teatro, a German café, bar, restaurant, and dinner

theater, is a palatable way to get three messages across. (1) Food: The

copulating male and female figures are cleverly made of vegetables, a visual

conceit that dates to the Renaissance and possibly to the Milanese painter

Giuseppe Archimboldo (1527–1593), known for metamorphosing cornucopia of

fruits and vegetables into human beings. Certainly since then, foodstuffs of all

kinds have been regularly transformed for comic and symbolic affect. (2) Sex:

What you see is what you get. The image is so obvious only the dead will

miss the illusion. Yet ever since the early twentieth century, when the mass

media was strapped with prudish limits, designers have used metaphor and

allusion to fool the censors. Double entendre—as in films of a train speeding

through a tunnel—or (on this page) the close-up of the thonged toe that looks

like a thong-clad torso—is the designer, photographer, and illustrator’s meat. (3)

Dinner theater: For the few that don’t get it—the plate is the stage, and the

food in flagrante delicto is the actors.

When photographed well or cropped dramatically, almost any nonsexual object

can be given a deceivingly sensual aura. Sex is so prevalent throughout our lives, yet

past repressions are so impressed on our psyches, that it is easy for the mind to

make the cognitive leap and see sex in everything. When helped along by a clever

stylist or keen conceptualist, it is not difficult to, for instance, see a glob of ketchup

slowly pouring on a hot dog as a pulsating tongue caressing . . . well, a hot dog.

Teatro

Designer: Maedche und Jongens

2004 Teatro Restaurant, ads

ad: Ulrich Budde d,p: Frank Nesslage cw: Udo Springer s: Maedche und Jongens

c: Teatro Restaurant

Ads designed to improve the image of a restaurant located next to a theater.

Fruits of desire

Looks like...

Fun with food