Nice to Meat You

Nice to Meat You is a concept for a food market focused on fake meat. The market features both leading companies developing plant-based substitutes for meat products and local vegan or vegetarian restaurants that include meat alternatives in their meals.

Fake meat is known to be a contentious topic that everyone has an opinion on, whether they are a die-hard vegan or long-time meat-lover’s pizza fan. This event allows all visitors to have fun trying out new meat alternatives in a non-judgmental, inclusive environment and meat (pun-intended) new products and people.

Branding
I experimented with many logo designs and type options. Ultimately I landed on using a text-based logo that would be accompanied by meat-inspired graphics and dynamic colourful branding.

Typeface
I originally looked at many meat packaging designs and often meat is sold wrapped up in rectangular brown paper packages tied up with string. This influenced my decision to use a cursive typeface to contrast a strong rectangular typeface.

*Colour selection and an accessibility study of colours to influence how the most essential text is used so key information is available to those with low-vision.*

Booth Selection
I selected vendors that featured an array of types of cuisines and local restaurants that are creative in how they cook with meat alternatives. I also included booths that featured the leading mass manufacturers and developers of fake meat in the supermarket. The idea is that people can try all sorts of types of fake meat and see if there is something that suits their specific desires.

Activity Design
As discussions around the meat industry can often be heated, I wanted to provide a welcoming space for these conversations to take place and activities that would provide a break from such discussions. There are sandwich-meat-looking coasters with conversation starters written on them. Activity booths include, a meatball-inspired ski-ball game, a game where you see how many patties you can flip into a BBQ using a spatula, a mini-museum showing some less-than-desirable historic versions of meat alternatives and more.

Structural Design
Building off of the rectangular influence of packaging and organic, decorativeness of string I brought a lot of hard rectangular structures into my market design. I was also influenced by pop-up Public Works markets that exist in New York City. I visited several Christmas markets to ask about how vendors like the size and shape of their design. Some vendors expressed a desire to have space to walk behind the booths, which I implemented into my floor plan.