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Kitchen stories: Sacher Torte

Design is finding new ways. Good design is to be prepared, well equipped, and organized. Sometimes this is not the case. Learn how to master the inconvenience. This is important. Under pressure, you can create wonders. Task 026/101: Today, you will cook a Sacher Torte. Once your Sacher is ready, dress it up with little people and share a picture with us. Set up your fictional world right on top of this decadent cake. Create a landscape with characters! Sacher Torte is a specific type of chocolate cake, or torte, invented by Austrian Franz Sacher in 1832 for Prince Wenzel von Metternich in Vienna, Austria. My Sacher Torte has been through war:

two layers of dense chocolate sponge + one thin layer of apricot jam in the middle + one top coating of dark chocolate icing = will do that to you:

Battleground music. In times of peace, the moon land is inhabited by strange creatures:

For my Sacher Torte, I followed this recipe. Enjoy!

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‘I have long been dreaming a dream: that I am a drop of dew on the leaf of a nameless plant deep in the valley of some far-off mountain range. The dewdrop rolls down into a little brook and mingles with its waters; the brook flows into a river which in turn discharges into the sea, and the waves of the sea in their turn lave the coasts of all the countries of the earth. Thus I picture to myself the cultural interchange of all peoples, and it has been my wish to take part, even if only as one little drop, in this important work.’

(Tetsuro Yoshida, 1955)

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Design to create life?

Design is making things grow, and keeping them alive. This week: making a micro-garden. A home garden. Day 1: you will plan your garden (you will research, document, decide what you want to do. You will make a list of the materials you need). Day 2: you will find and collect all the materials needed to make your garden (you will search around your house, you might need to go to a store…) Day 3: you will make a prototype of your garden. Day 4: you will construct your garden. What: We will deal with time. We will deal with space. We will deal with vegetables. We will deal with natural (and/or artificial) light. We will deal with making choices. How: Choosing your own parameters of success. Giving yourself boundaries. Deciding how ambitious you want to be.

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I discovered something quite extraordinary today: the Wayang Puppet theatre. Did you know? - Wayang is the Javanese word for shadows puppet theatre. - The first record of a wayang performance is from an inscription dated 930 CE which says si Galigi mawayang, or "Sir Galigi played wayang". - UNESCO recognised in 2003 the wayang kulit as a Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.

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10 management lessons from the dabbawalas

1. Build your organisation around people Much of the dabbawala organisation’s success is due to their human resource system, in the way they hire, develop, manage and reward people, says Stefan Thomke, William Barclay Harding Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. “It’s an organisation built around people, not around technology.” 2. Commitment and attitude trump qualifications Although the dabbawalas are semi-literate, they are “suitably educated” for their jobs because they believe in serving the customer above all else. “We couldn’t hire MBAs,” says Manish Tripathi, founder and chairman of the Dabbawala Foundation. 3. Give employees a sense of purpose and value The dedication of the dabbawalas can be partly attributed to the value they place on the work they do. “Our dabbawalas view their work as worship. They are grateful to have work, and to serve others by delivering food is to serve God,” says Manish. As a result, he says, everyone in Mumbai respects the dabbawalas for the work they do. 4. Stay true to your core purpose While the dabbawala organisation has received suggestions to branch out into other business lines, such as cooking the food instead of merely supplying it, it has stayed true to its century-old purpose. “We focus on delivering dabbas to our customers as best as we can,” says Manish. 5. Recruit carefully New dabbawalas go through a strict six-month probationary period and are hired from only the villages around Pune, so they suit the working culture. “We are all one family, from the Vakari sect. We eat lunch together and we pray together,” says Manish. 6. Don’t be too lean, build in buffers “Each dabbawala is capable of collecting up to 20 dabbas a day – but this is the maximum. Usually, in a group, each dabbawala will collect less so that if a dabbawala is sick the others can compensate. New dabbawalas are hired only to replace a member or when there are too many new customers in an area,” says Manish. 7. Encourage self-discipline The dabbawalas are self-motivated to be disciplined, not because they have a superior telling them what to do, says Manish. “They work right because it’s the right thing to do. Self-discipline is the way to make an organisation great.” 8. Create a sense of ownership The dabbawala organisation has no employees because every member is a shareholder, says Manish. “So if one member does less work and earns less money, he’s also hurting himself.” 9. Maintain a flat organisation Harvard Business School’s case study notes that the dabbawala organisation has evolved into a flat organisational structure to enable quick decision-making. 10. Abandon bad customers “One customer should not cause thousands to suffer. If a Mumbai housewife is late with the dabba for more than one week, we no longer serve that customer,” says Manish. This article appeared in Management@work, the monthly management pullout of The Edge Malaysia, Issue 839, Jan 3-9, 2011

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Can we design service?

'Design deals with immaterial stuff. In contemporary design, services and how they are provided are getting very important. India - Dabbawala system

The dabbawala system started because in 1885, a banker in Mumbai really loved his wife. As he was working far from home, he could not manage to come back home to eat the meal his wife was preparing for him. So, he hired a man to pick up his lunch and have it delivered to his office. His idea spread around town and many started to imitate him, until one day a farmer decided to make a business out of it. In the Indian culture, people like “dabbawalas” are considered as “annadattas” (the person who provides food). Upon tradition, they are very well respected and known as very trustworthy citizens. Think about this: a bento box is product design. Dabbawallas are service design. Both are nice, both are special. It is up to us to decide what we want to do! What about you? In the place where you live, are there some typical services? What kind of service could you imagine in order to improve the life of the people around you?' Source: #design1o1 Sure enough, we are, I am taking services for granted, especially when they've always been there to use them: food delivery, transportation, call centres and so on. If in India, people working in the service industry are well respected, in Europe and in my country, although these services are making our life easier, these are not the most desired jobs. Perhaps it has to do with the low pay? On another note, these days I read about something quite extraordinary although not specific to my country. In fact, not specific to any country as it happened as an experimental exercise: mobile design

That is, during the Beijing Design Week that took place last month, Amsterdam-based agency Lava turned a scooter into a mobile design agency in order to provide small shops in the Chinese capital’s Dashilan district with fresh tailor-made logos, free of charge. And to be honest, I would like to see more of this happening in the world. Read more here.

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Kitchen Stories III: Ambience Task 025/101: Cook the same recipe as previously. Create an ambience for your mother (a special person). Create a mood; think about light, dressed table, music, table setting and food presentation. Retro ambience for the raw energy cake: Warm light and earthy colours Music: Beatles Autumn flowers Vintage mood Healthy vibes Hope my mom will like it :)

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KITCHEN STORIES II: Raw energy cake Task 024/101: Tools Share a picture of your kitchen tools. Nothing less, nothing more.

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KITCHEN STORIES I: Raw energy cake The task (023/101): Carefully choose a recipe to cook for yourself. It can be an ordinary recipe but choose it carefully! You will need to cook it (and eat it) tomorrow and the day after as well. Share with us a picture of your starting ingredients.

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“There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.”

― John Cage

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4'33''

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The Complete Notebook Series

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Notebook series: magazine recycling to make paper

Design is what you touch, design is what you feel. The task (019/101): Our material (paper) is a medium to convey meaning. Whenever we choose a specific material, we are adding a big element in our (design-based) storytelling. Today we use paper as a medium to make another notebook. The Chanel notebook: For this task I prepared some pages from fashion magazine and some paint. The first step was to paint the pages and cover the writing and the ads. At times, I left some spaces unpainted, like for the cover: I selected 3 colours to use for the pages: gold, red and silver to match the theme of high fashion that Chanel represents. And I binded the pages using black tape. Since my cover page had the portrait of Coco Chanel and since this is my third notebook of the series, I named it: N.3.

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Notebook 2: Japanese Book stab binding technique

Design is understanding the complete series of solutions to a given question. Understanding where you are in this series. In the design world, rarely there is a “perfect” solution. Normally, with your various constraints you can find the finest possible solution for your given task. The task (/018101) Today, you will make another notebook. Your main point of focus will be to put together a stack of sheets of paper using the book stab technique. My ladybug notebook: It decided to go for a small notebook for short ideas. I kept the golden ratio proportions while constructing it and again, I prefered to keep the decorations to the minimum. Easy to make and to carry. I pretty much followed this tutorial. Except I used another tool to stab the papers which I found in my father tool box. I'm not sure about its name but I've been told it's used to pierce through leather. You can adjust the size of the holes and it looks quite funny: More background info? Here: How to Stab bind tutorial George Kubler’s “Shape of Time”:

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Proportions: the golden ratio notebook

Design is relationships among parts. Good design implies invisible (but powerful) ingredients. And proportions are one of them. Why? Because to achieve beauty, functionality and harmony we need precise measures. And we must know how to take them. Measuring systems, tools, how to keep track and compare. The task (017/101): Make a simple notebook according to the golden proportions. Then, post a beautiful picture of it. The type of picture that will get us all envious (that we did not take it ourselves)... The process: I started with a boring folder. Then I re-constructed it using the Golden Ratio principle (more info in the resouces).

Since the cardboard of the folder had already some drawings, I decided to cover it up with some doodling of my own. I had a couple of unsuccessful attempts but finally I decided on this super simple cover made of used bread paper bags with a simple drawing of the ratio:

It's not perfect but I'm pleased with the result: minimalistic design and recyclable materials. And I can add as many sheets of paper inside as I want.

Inspiration and resources: A website dedicated to the Golden Ratio Golden ration in design Golden ration in art and how-to Modulor Man - Le Corusier Golden Ratio calculator Photoshop plugin tutorial to get the golden section into your composition

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Design is multiple points of view. The Task (016/101): First, you will search for (and compare) existing notebooks from different people. Then, you will go to a stationery shop to check out various notebooks on sale. Once you are done, you will share 2 images of your favourite notebooks with us (with a short caption explaining why you like them so much). For this homework, since there aren't any stationary shops where I live at the moment, I decided to share a part of my notebook collection which I gathered while living abroad in several countries the last few years. My all time favourite notebooks are Muji's. I just love the simplicity of the design and the endless possibilities they offer. And of course, the affordable price! Second best is Paperchase - I used to live just across the street one of their shops in UK and I used to visit them regularly. The countries I mention is where I bought the notebooks from and the number of them isn't proportional with the time spent in the country. While researching for famous people's notebooks, I came across this Brain Pickings article which offers a great collection of most notable inspiration in this field: Brain Picking's Inside notebooks