Bored Panda was interested to get pie artist Jessica's take on how much designers and creatives should focus on the audience and end-users, and how much they should try to stay true to their artistic vision.
"I have a loose 'three for them, one for me' policy when it comes to my art. Riding emerging trends and tapping into the cultural zeitgeist certainly helps when you are trying to build a following. And as much as I would love to just make what I want all the time, my art puts food on the table (figuratively and literally), so I have to pay attention to what the people respond most to," Jessica explained to Bored Panda.
"But sometimes I’ll get the urge to create something obscure that I know no corporate partner will care for, and only a tiny portion of the population will appreciate, but will make me happy. So if I’ve got the energy, I’ll go for it. And not shockingly, it is a lot easier to find the energy for these types of works! I often end up surprised by the response to the 'one for me' pies, however. Maybe because they are made with a little more care and love, but oftentimes people will like those just as much as my more 'mainstream' offerings, even if they aren’t familiar with the subject matter," she said that the audience can always surprise you with what they end up liking.
"I wonder if folks can guess which of my pies fall into the 'one for me' category?" she mused.
Though a lot of designers, artists, and creatives frequently encounter creative roadblocks, Jessica is one of the lucky few who never really had to deal with them (and we might be a bit jealous!). "I have sketchbooks filled with hundreds more Pie Art concepts than I could ever make in ten lifetimes… And there is so much creative inspiration out there in the world! All I have to do is look at craftspeople at the top of their game in a couple of different areas—watchmakers, architects, gardeners, painters, poets, etc.—and my mind is filled to the top with new ideas again," she shared that we can look to nearly any area in life for inspiration.
"The biggest challenge to my work is not the 'creativity tank,' it’s the 'energy/motivation' tank. Professional artists who have to balance commercial realities against artistic passions I think all have to deal with finding ways to keep that 'motivation tank' topped up. It’s not always easy! But I find that being around other creative working professionals and talking with them about it helps a lot."
Jessica explained to Bored Panda that "it is critical" to plan out every last detail in advance when it comes to Pie Art. "Once your dough is rolled out, the clock is ticking! If you allow the fat in your dough to melt, you’ll lose the little pockets of air in the finished pie dough that create that delicious flaky mouth-feel, and you’ll end up with tough leathery crust instead," she explained why exactly time is so important. When it comes to turning her latest project into reality, every minute counts and the race against time is on.
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"To circumvent this, I fully sketch out my designs in advance and create paper or acetate templates to help me cut out pieces as fast as humanly possible. I even take things a step further and walk through the whole process in my mind before I take the dough out to the fridge. Visualizing the process this way allows me to spot any steps I may have missed—like a tool I’ve forgotten to set out, or the fact that I’ll probably want tea while I’m working and should put the kettle on now—which saves precious minutes of working time."
However, she noted that things can still "go sideways from time to time." Nobody's perfect and mistakes sometimes happen even to the best of the best. These mistakes, however, help push the boundaries of what's possible. "Less often these days, but when I am working with a new technique or unfamiliar dough, there is always the possibility that I will suddenly find myself needing to get creative to solve a problem on the fly. Sometimes, these last-minute saves end up becoming 'proper Pie Art technique cannon' down the road! 'Happy Accidents' are real."
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Associate Professor of Design Studies Tim Antoniuk, from the University of Alberta, previously shared with Bored Panda his take on design, including his opinion on Dieter Rams’ legendary 10 principles of good design.
He believes that Rams “does a great job” identifying what makes a design good. However, the principles themselves might not stand the test of time as well as could be hoped.
"That said, given the speed of change that we encounter today in our lives in the digital environment that we live in, I believe that some great design is not necessarily timeless. One example is seen in Interface Design, Ux Design, and in-service design. As new layers get added into our lives, things naturally have an evolutionary cycle,” Tim explained.
“This is different from furniture which naturally can be more ubiquitous and designed to fit the human body. There is a great deal of fuzziness in this discussion but I do believe that the essence of this idea is true," he mused.
According to the design expert, someone’s personal taste creates a gray area between designs that are objectively good or bad.
"The gray area comes in when people start to talk about taste and about degrees of aesthetic. I may love the design of Bauhaus furniture, for example, while somebody may feel that it is too cold and void of personality. Not unlike great art, I believe that much of what came from this era is ‘great design,’ in part because it represents an era and a philosophy. When we start to mix in discussions of taste and preference, that is where the gray areas of good and bad design get blurred."
In the expert’s opinion, we can intuitively feel if a design is good. "Quite often, this relates to ergonomics and the usability or functionality of the products and services and systems. Having said that, I think far too many people expect poor design that doesn’t really work well," Tim told us.
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The upside is that good design is a skill that can be learned. Through practice and exposure to quality. And lots of it. "For me, great design is what Dieter [Rams] talks about—it is also intuitive, it is deeply sympathetic and empathetic to the user at all levels, and at some level, it is emotional. It is a catalyst for giving us feelings."
