I spent a really enjoyable 10 days, jointly running a short project at l’Ecole de Design Nantes Atlantique’s Master Food Lab, working around all of the different facets of sugar – its history, its politics, health, and enjoyment of sugar, in all its states. Great work from our students and good to work with some great creative talents in our teaching staff like elisehuneau of Food Design Agency Papillote and Amaury Poudray and from afar, design educators such as #lucasmasson from the Design Academy Eindhoven and #Marcamaurylegrand – winner of Masterchef 2022 …

Why the theme of sugar? Well Nantes is known for it’s history in the slave trade. This is where the triangular commerce bought sugar and molasses from Africa and other regions in the world and made Nantes famous for sugary gourmandise. We have a very famous biscuit brand based in Nantes called Lu, as well as the famous Berlingots.

Health issues are also a big focus of our Masters Food Design Lab, and sugar is one of those subjects that comes to the surface a lot. The students also are aware of their vending machines in school being full of sugary snacks.

Lucas Masson and Amaury Poudray gave the students a theme to inspire their work. ‘Barbapapa’ is a 1970s children’s picture book developed by the French-American couple Annette Tison and Talus Taylor, who lived in Paris. Barbapapa is both the title character and the name of his “species”. The book, originally written in French, was later translated into over 30 languages – and was adapted for the TV – very popular in France at that time. You can find some episodes on YouTube.

Take a look here to find out more about the Barbapapa family

The students were separated into 3 groups. 1 group worked on food solutions using natural sugars (fructose) from fruit and vegetables in all their states – juices, pomice, peelings, waste – drying, liquidising, cooking, tasting, testing… a sub-group also looked at Barbapapa (Candy Floss) to test different recipes, flavours, colours etc.

The second group were responsible for the iconic structure of the event which was focused around Barbapapa (Candy Floss), an iconic light pink, soft as a cloud, product containing mostly sugar which we remember from the fairground as children.

I worked mostly with the last group on the brand image, overall brand experience and messaging using fruit and vegetable inks to develop their graphic universe. They also developed a workshop space in the event to encourage visitors to paint their own posters from vegetable and fruit inks.

I hope you enjoyed reading and watching – we really had fun developing this event.

Please leave your comments about your thoughts on sugar here.