Tag: Food Font

Food Font @ The Green Corps Fairfax Farm Making Food Alphabets

Food Font @ The Green Corps Fairfax Farm Making Food Alphabets

Posted on by Kbaumlier

Green Corps is a work/study program supported by the Cleveland Botanical Garden.  For the program, high school students work to transform vacant lots in the city into urban farms. The students are paid for their work and they develop work skills, leadership, and help build a healthier, greener community for themselves and their neighbors.  Green Corps students work 16–20 hours a week in their “home base” neighborhood farm.  They spend time planting, weeding, pruning, harvesting, and preparing crops for market.  Each week, students take turns selling the produce at farmers markets.

Today I worked with 13 Green Corps students from the ½ acre Fairfax Learning Farm which is located in a once vacant lot on E79th at Amos Ave. in Cleveland.  The students worked in teams to create 3 food alphabets for the Food Font project.

When I arrived, two students gave me a tour of the farm.  Rainbow Swiss chard, kale, eggplant, okra, radishes, watermelon, cucumbers and other vegetables were growing in the farm.  There were also herbs such as basil, rosemary, and thyme.  The student showed me their personal square foot garden boxes which are the size of an average backyard garden that each student maintains.

I gave an overview of the Food Font project, and each team worked together to make letters out of the Farm Food.  The first group worked with okra, peppers, and a few squash to make a vegetable letterset that had a fun, flirty feel to it due to the curly shape of the peppers.  The next group got creative with the rainbow Swiss chard and made the “Swissy” alphabet.   The last group worked with full and sliced potatoes to make a lowercase alphabet called “Potato Patato” with potatoes that were harvested yesterday.

When the Food Font tool is built, these Fairfax Farm Green Corps alphabets will be in the Food Font tool so we can all write things in Swiss chard, potatoes, peppers, and okra.  Thanks to everyone that participated and to Alex the team leader who worked with me to plan for the activity.

Image Source:
Kristen Baumlier

Links:

Green Corps – Cleveland Botanical Garden

 

 

Eat Your Kale: Love It or Hate It

Eat Your Kale: Love It or Hate It

Posted on by Kbaumlier

In talking about my new project Food Font I often mention the possibility of being able to use a food alphabet made of food, such as kale to make images, posters, signs, where you write with your food.

I have learned that people have a strong opinion of kale – they either LOVE it or HATE it.

Kale has been grown for over 2000 years.  Kale was the most widely eaten green vegetable until the Middle ages when cabbages became more popular.  It is often called a “superfood,” has vitamin A, B complex and C, and is a powerful antioxidant.

I myself love kale and have learned that I like the red winter kale or red Russian kale which is milder and is a little sweet.

So what about you?  Do you love it or hate it?

Links:

http://www.foodfont.com

Food Font @ CIA on Thursday April 26th in the Student Lounge

Food Font @ CIA on Thursday April 26th in the Student Lounge

Posted on by Kbaumlier

On Thursday April 26th is the first in-person activity related to my new project Food Font.

Anyone who is eating lunch in the student lounge at school  will be invited to participate.  The plan is to have interested students, faculty and staff to work on making  2 CIA (Cleveland Institute of Art) food alphabets.  People will be invited to make a letterform out of some of their lunch food.  Each letter  will be photographed and will be part of the 2 CIA font sets that will be used in the Food Font interactive design tool that I am developing this Summer.

We will be creating 2 fonts:
The CIA Vending machine food font (made of food from the vending machines)
The CIA Packed Lunch font (made of food from food from packed lunches)

Food Font is a project comprised of food and design workshops, font making activities and the use of the interactive online design tool Food Font which will be accessible at www.foodfont.com.   The project supports education, interaction, and communication about food, health, and design.

I’m excited to do this first in-person activity and to test out some of the techniques I will be making into printed directions and resources so that others can do a Food Font workshop.  We’ll see how it goes!