Anatomy of Design

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ANATOMY OF DESIGN

This is what the Croatian designers Bruketa & Zinic call an over-the-top annual

report, “dedicated to the pleasure one takes in cooking and eating food.” It was

produced for the Croatian-based Podravka Company (which grew from a fruit-

and-vegetable-processing business in 1934 into what it is today: the largest

packaged food-producing company in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe),

whose utilitarian package designs are not nearly as progressive or ambitiously

designed as this report. Nonetheless, the ironically titled

Slow Food does

communicate the essence of the Podravka brand, whose motto is “company

with a heart.” You can feed someone only if you put your heart into it,

proclaims the company's public relations materials. “Food has become more

than just a physiological necessity,” add Bruketa and Zinic. “The old saying 'Love

goes through the stomach' is very true. And that's what the report is saying:

Feed me with love.”

This corporate report, with its surfeit of appetizing tricks and

gimmicks—fold-out recipes, three-dimensional embossed photographic covers,

and French-fold pages—is indeed full of heart and love for graphic design,

but its also replete with all the necessary business data, presented in an

appealing manner. The designers explain there are two levels of communication

embedded in this bilingual book: the rational—expressed mostly through facts

and figures—and the emotional—presented through design that communicates

the brand's values.

To produce such a resplendent object, the designers had to be totally

convinced by the corporate mythos, which they recite without faltering: “The

entire report is permeated with love for cooking, from the covers and all

through the report,” say Bruketa and Zinic. And they spared little on either the

production or the creative side to make it so. The cover is made of tablecloth

and wrapped in baking paper. The aluminum foil placed in the middle of the

report contains hearts with thermoreactive dye that, when warmed, reveals

recipes. The pages with French folds hide unique recipes. No resources were

spared in the production.

But the designers did have to address some practical concerns. With all

these tasty hors d'oeuvre, the report had to be protected from the elements,

which is why the embossed covers are done in plastic, not paper, and then

covered in a separate sheath. The need to protect has long been the mother of

design invention for other book-objects, where boxes, slipcases, and even far-

out coverings like gloves are used both to project an aesthetic aura and to

protect it. Books and annual reports like Slow Food, which are manufactured to

be lasting and collectible objects. have a long and creatively rich history.

Speaking of protection, plastic has often been used both to protect and

reinforce the objectness of the book. Herbert Bayer's 1930

Section Allemand

exhibition, a modernist-inspired catalog by the Bauhaus master, designed with a

plastic cover featuring embossed letters, was used to evoke a Machine Age

sensibility while sparing the book from corrosive elements. In 1970, the soft

plastic cover for a catalog of pop artist Claes Oldenberg's work (designed by Ivan

Chermayeff), was perfectly suited for an artist who made monumental sculptures

out of that very substance, and it served the more utilitarian goal of making it

more durable that most catalogs.

The use of beautiful French-fold sheets also contributes to making

Slow

Food a durable and appealing design object, providing an air of sophistication that

the annual report for any other company that sells frozen vegetables, cream of

cheese soup, and spaghetti with tomato sauce might never achieve.

Slow Food

Designer: Bruketa & Zinic

2005 Slow Food, annual report

ad,d: Davor Bruketa, Nikola Zinic s: Bruketa & Zinic c: Podravka d.d.

Annual report focusing on the core of the food company's philosophy—a company with a

heart. The idea is that you can feed someone only if you put your heart into it.

Cardboard slipcases and boxes

Unusual cover materials

Usage of French fold