How do recipes for college student comfort food fit in a digital design tools course?
The spring semester has ended with some fun surprises from students in a course I teach at Temple University, called Introduction to Digital Design Tools. I have taught many variations of this class, introducing students to Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign since the early 2000s. The software and the need for it have changed a great deal over the years. Despite the increasing availability of easy and free design apps for non-designers, basic competency in Adobe applications is still an entry level requirement for many jobs.
Since I learned these tools on my own, (having gone to art school in the dark ages before the invention of the personal computer) my approach to teaching is project-based. If there is a problem of interest to solve, the students, with no prior experience in design or design applications, overwhelmingly surprise themselves (and me) with how creatively they learn to use the tools.
In previous semesters, students have been challenged to design travel magazines, music posters, fairytale playbills, portraits of John Oliver… In this first in-person semester after two years of remote learning, the goal was to create recipe cards using all three of the digital design application we covered. I reflected on how important food had been to me during the lockdown days, weeks, and months of the pandemic and I asked the students to choose a comfort food as their topic. Some adapted favorite recipes from cookbooks, some checked in with family members, and a few developed their own dishes.
The results were tasty enough to encourage me to share these three samples, each with the student’s own words.
Anesu Nyamupingidza is an International Student from Zimbabwe and is a Senior at Temple University, studying Visual Studies at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture. She enjoys creating art that is representative of the natural world around her and is an advocate for sustainability.
“Growing up in Harare Zimbabwe, I was fortunate enough to experience the consumption of foods that are considered bizarre outside of the culture, and everything was always passed off as ‘it tastes like chicken.’ From Mopane worms to crocodile tail but, in all honesty, it did not taste like chicken at all. In 2018 I became pescatarian, and I found the transition easy both financially and nutrition-wise. That was until I started attending college in Philadelphia. Being pescatarian is anything but cheap in Philly and, although still somewhat expensive, picking up a vegetarian diet was the next best thing.