While in the middle of one of my monthly (OK, make that more
like quarterly) desk cleanings, I came across the Spring 2009 Prattfolio. For
those of you who don’t know it, Prattfolio is the magazine of NYC’s Pratt
Institute. This issue was – appropriately enough – the publication’s “food
issue.”
As we here at Contract are gearing up for a combined
November/December issue, which will partially focus on spaces driven by food
services and/or products, I figured I better sit down and tear into this.
So I more than willingly stopped my quarterly – oh right, I
mean monthly – desk clearing off and went on to be pleasantly surprised at how
many Pratt graduates have gone into the food services and sciences industry in
one way or another, and how far reaching their efforts have been.
As a design editor, I am well aware of how a well-designed
restaurant weighs tremendously on its success. But the design industry and the
food industry mingle in many other ways that I’d admittedly never even bothered
to think about.
Harsher folk might call it something like a form of
capitalistic brain washing, but restaurants and food manufacturers can have a
tough run of it trying to distinguish themselves from all the other products
and services absolutely bombarding consumers on a regular basis, and need ways
to stand out in the crowd. Many Pratt grads have helped them to do just that.
One such rock star is Herb Meyers, B.F.A. Advertising Design
’49 whom along with his firm Gerstman + Meyers have designed and redesigned
product lines for manufacturers such as Campbell’s, Breyers, M&M Mars,
Perdue, and many more. The firm redesigned Breyers Ice Cream packaging when the
company was preparing for a national expansion, utilizing black backgrounds –
unheard of for dairy packaging. G+M earned many industry awards for their
redesign and the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times even wrote articles
about it.
Other Pratt grads took a slight detour with their degrees.
Colette Peters, M.F.A. Painting ’81, went on to open Colette’s Cakes, a New
York City-based specialty cake company.
Q: When did you become interested in being a master baker?
A: I had always liked
to bake, but I was more interested in painting. After graduating from Pratt, I
worked for Tiffany & Co. and made many cakes for people at work. I also
made some cakes for the windows, store displays, and some of the Tiffany books.
This actually led me to a contract to write a book on cake decorating and that
was what really encouraged me to start a cake business.
Definitely a fun issue! I hope we can deliver just as well
in November. Download the PDF of Prattfolio, Spring’09.
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