Parallel to the growing appreciation of food, we're seeing more and more designers tackle the issue of how and what we eat, from product design to intensive research to enviable interiors. In this spirit of food-related creativity, a new London-based publication called The Gourmand offers a highly visual yet brilliantly understated journal of food and culture, something like Apartamento's foodie cousin. "The Gourmand was born as a means to share this exciting cultural shift and to celebrate food as a catalyst for creativity."

Our friends at Sight Unseen highlighted perhaps the most relevant feature from the debut issue, which is available now: the collaboration between art director Jamie Brown and photographer Luke Kirwan. Brown's expository text for "A 20th Century Palate" complements the compelling imagery to a tee: "There are few things that rival my insatiable hunger for colour and pattern, my appetite for food is one. Combining the two would surely go down well."

The concept was born—to represent design movements of the 20th century through specially arranged plates of appropriate foods, finished with hand cut patterned paper table cloth backgrounds.

It made sense to use foodstuffs relevant to each movement, so for Bauhaus, a simple selection of Bavarian cold meats and cheeses, rye bread and a touch of mustard. Post modernism openly embraced modern man made materials, so processed food like Kraft cheese, pepperoni and white sliced bread fitted the bill. The saccharine sweet colour schemes of Art Deco were echoed with biscuits and cakes, the earthy tones and floral designs of Arts and Crafts suited a crunchy salad, and Neo Classicism called for the honourable mix of cheese and biscuits.

The shoot day was waste not want not. How glorious it was! Any one session that allows you to eat crab sticks, emmenthal, grapes, radish and pink wafers in one sitting is up there with the best.

The execution is tasteful enough to whet a designer's appetite... a bit more conceptual, perhaps, than Joost Elffer's wonderfully imaginative Food Play, a personal favorite in the vein of food-that-looks-like-other-things... and, in turn, the eyebombing phenomenon.

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