{"id":59494,"date":"2017-07-27T16:48:03","date_gmt":"2017-07-27T16:48:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metropolismag.com\/projects\/straight-gut-mold-positions-food-design-frontier\/"},"modified":"2021-12-31T20:05:35","modified_gmt":"2021-12-31T20:05:35","slug":"straight-gut-mold-positions-food-design-frontier","status":"publish","type":"metro_viewpoint","link":"https:\/\/metropolismag.com\/viewpoints\/straight-gut-mold-positions-food-design-frontier\/","title":{"rendered":"Straight for the Gut: MOLD Positions Food as the Next Design Frontier"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two years ago, design journalist LinYee Yuan was working on a <\/span>story <\/span><\/a>about a set of eight, striking black-and-white posters created by designer Gemma Warriner to visualize the full extent of the global food crisis. \u00a0Yuan was floored by one of the facts on the posters: by the year 2050, the world\u2019s food supply will have to sustain nine billion people. <\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>\u201cIt\u2019s a totally terrifying statistic,\u201d says Yuan. Long after her story was published, that one, powerful sentence lodged itself top-of-mind for Yuan. Her editor\u2019s radar became highly attuned to design projects that addressed food shortages, waste, and new technologies around production. <\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>Yuan\u2019s passion for food design wasn\u2019t new. In 2013, she\u2019d started a website, This Is Mold<\/a><\/span>, publishing hundreds of stories about a wide range of food innovations like edible Christmas trees and tabletop systems for farming mealworms at home. <\/span><\/p>\n

The ideas on Yuan\u2019s site were so unusual that <\/span>Quartz<\/span><\/a>, the startup global news platform owned by Atlantic Media, began syndicating one or two stories from Yuan\u2019s site per week. \u00a0Her stories were being read in 20 countries, and her social media platforms drew over 40,000 followers. \u00a0Yuan knew she was onto something, and encountering the food crisis statistics in 2015 only added to her sense of urgency. <\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>Yuan decided to galvanize her contacts in both the editorial and the design worlds to amplify the conversation about the future of food. In March of this year, she launched a <\/span>Kickstarter campaign<\/span><\/a> for a new, bi-annual magazine that would celebrate design \u201cas an agent of change in our food system.\u201d Within 30 days, over 700 backers contributed $37,000 to make it happen. <\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>MOLD<\/em>\u2019s first issue is, as Yuan describes it, \u201cchallenging\u201d on purpose. She knew the publication would have to be \u201can artifact\u201d itself to gain real attention in the design world. \u201cThere\u2019s no reason to print something unless it\u2019s worth the paper it\u2019s printed on,\u201d she says. <\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>Readers encounter highly-layered\u2014and not all easy-to-decipher\u2014original fonts and freshly-commissioned illustrations and fine art photography. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The theme of the first issue is equally unconventional: microbes. Specifically, it imagines the human gut as a design space. Feature stories include a bacterial design project that colors your feces to send you bright signals about your health and self-cleaning Japanese toilets that also analyze your urine. <\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>It\u2019s a lot to digest, and Yuan has no plans to settle on more comfortable topics in future issues. She sees MOLD<\/em> as a platform where the brightest design minds are encouraged to tackle the global food crisis in their own, uninhibited ways. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>\u201cDesigners have a superpower,\u201d she says. \u201cThey can help us reframe things, and ask the right questions to offer human-centered solutions.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy\u00a0<\/em>“Food Wizards Bompas & Parr Mix Willy Wonka With Makerbot.”<\/em><\/a>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With ambitions to tackle the global food crisis, the new design pub isn’t your typical feel-good foodie mag.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1080,"featured_media":22742,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"featured_image_focal_point":[],"legacy_WP_ID":null},"tags":[593,309,312],"metro_tax_domain":[8],"metro_tax_topic":[26],"metro_tax_program":[],"metro_issue":[],"metro_cat_viewpoint":[],"internal_flag":[],"class_list":["post-59494","metro_viewpoint","type-metro_viewpoint","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-digital-media","tag-food","tag-graphic-design","metro_tax_domain-cultural","metro_tax_topic-publication"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nStraight for the Gut: MOLD Positions Food as the Next Design Frontier - Metropolis<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"With ambitions to tackle the global food crisis, the new design pub isn't your typical feel-good foodie mag.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/metropolismag.com\/viewpoints\/straight-gut-mold-positions-food-design-frontier\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Straight for the Gut: MOLD Positions Food as the Next Design Frontier - 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