The art of food branding
The Food Chain
BBC
4.7 • 545 Ratings
🗓️ 13 March 2025
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Why do brands have such power over us? Ruth Alexander talks to the designers influencing your decisions about what and where you eat. Renowned graphic designer Paula Scher shares her insights on what it takes to create a visual identity that stands the test of time, including her work on the US fast-food restaurant Shake Shack. And Arjen Klinkenberg, the creative mind behind Dutch company Tony’s Chocolonely, tells us how he designed its distinctive chocolate bar wrapper in just 10 minutes. Together they discuss what makes a design classic a classic and reveal the secret to building a brand that endures (hint: don’t tweak). To get in touch with the show, please email: thefoodchain@bbc.co.uk Producers: Izzy Greenfield and Sam Clack.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm no longer ravenous. I'll no longer eat until I fall asleep. The Hunger Game, |
| 0:05.9 | a new five-part series exploring the meteoric rise of weight loss drugs. It's been an incredible |
| 0:10.7 | story with these drugs. The uptake, the amount of product that's been sold, the amounts of money |
| 0:15.1 | is cost. What the drugs do, how they work, and the knock-on effects of their widespread use. |
| 0:20.5 | We'll be sitting here in three years' time going, oh, it caused problems that we're now going to have to fix. |
| 0:26.2 | The Hunger Game with me, Professor Giles Yo. |
| 0:29.1 | Listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.4 | That brightly coloured chocolate bar wrapper that just caught your eye in the shop, is it art? |
| 0:42.9 | Of course it is. You know, it is a creation of something. |
| 0:46.1 | But there's something emotional about it and people can connect to it more universally than really, I think, painting. |
| 0:55.3 | This is the food chain from the BBC World Service. I'm Ruth Alexander. And this week, |
| 1:00.3 | we're talking to the brand designers who are shaping the decisions you make about what and where you eat. |
| 1:07.5 | Branding is not, and marketing is not slapping your logo and everything. It has to do with |
| 1:13.1 | feeling. It has to do with subliminal messaging. It taps into your youth, into things you admire, |
| 1:21.2 | into ways of thinking, and therefore, therefore very, very strong. They'll tell us how coming up |
| 1:26.2 | with the logos you see on food packaging can be like some |
| 1:29.1 | kind of conjuring act. |
| 1:31.1 | It's actually one of the first times that I worked from my gut, and it just sort of appeared. |
| 1:36.1 | It just sort of came up there. |
| 1:38.2 | It looked good. |
| 1:39.4 | That's all I can say. |
| 1:40.5 | It looked good. |
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