Refining the Project Concept
I felt that the project had accumulated many ideas but lacked a clear overall structure. Before continuing with any visual development, I decided to step back and reorganise the project as a whole. This process allowed me to review my previous research, identify the strongest concepts, and remove ideas that no longer supported the central aim of the project.
Concept: Rebuilding people's relationship with vegetables through understanding rather than persuasion.
Audience: People who dislike vegetables.
Aim: To help people understand why they dislike vegetables and encourage them to rediscover vegetables with curiosity rather than pressure.
Strategy:
Stage 1 – Publication
Explore the reasons behind vegetable aversion through research, personal stories and sensory understanding.
Stage 2 – Vegetable Apology letters
A series of apology letters written from the perspective of vegetables, aiming to reduce prejudice and encourage people to see vegetables differently.
Publication Development
I titled the publication Before We Say No, reflecting the idea that rejection often happens before understanding. Instead of encouraging readers to eat more vegetables, the publication aimed to explore the reasons behind food aversion before asking people to give vegetables another chance.
Purpose：It should help readers understand why they dislike vegetables by exploring the psychological, cultural, and personal factors that shape our relationship with food. I wanted the publication to encourage reflection rather than provide answers.I wanted the book to guide readers through the process of understanding how their relationship with vegetables had been formed.
Publication Structure
How early food experiences shape later preferences.
The influence of first impressions and visual judgement.
Common beliefs and misunderstandings surrounding vegetables.
Exploring how flavour, texture, and repeated exposure can reshape perception.
Editorial Language
I limited the colour palette to yellow, red and dark brown. Yellow became the dominant colour throughout the publication, representing memories, warmth and everyday experiences. Red was used sparingly to highlight key information and moments of emphasis, while dark brown provided a stable typographic colour that felt softer and more approachable than pure black.
About Yellow
The yellow tone was used to evoke the warmth and ambiguity of childhood memories, supporting the publication's narrative.
About Red
Red was reserved for visual accents, helping to guide readers through the publication and draw attention to important ideas without overwhelming the content.
I also experimented with the treatment of photographs. Instead of using full-colour documentary images, I applied a textured halftone effect to create a sense of memory rather than objective documentation. Since many of the stories in the publication relate to childhood experiences, I wanted the images to feel slightly distant and reconstructed, as if they were fragments recalled from memory instead of precise records.
The photographic treatment intentionally reduces realism, shifting the images away from documentation and towards recollection.
Content
The publication combines academic research, surveys, and personal interviews. Research literature provides theoretical support for understanding food preferences and vegetable aversion, while surveys reveal common experiences shared by a wider audience. Interviews and personal stories add individual perspectives, making the publication more relatable and emotionally engaging. By bringing these different sources together, the publication aims to connect evidence with lived experience rather than relying on opinion alone.
| Literature |
|---|
Karen Le Billon – Getting to Yum |
Bee Wilson – First Bite |
Repeated Exposure Research (Cooke, Wardle, etc.) |
Food Neophobia Studies |
Studies on Visual Appearance & Food Choice |
| Why it informed my project |
|---|
| Helped me understand how childhood food experiences shape long-term eating habits. Explores how taste preferences are learned rather than innate, supporting the idea that food dislikes can change over time. Provided evidence that repeated exposure is one of the most effective ways to increase acceptance of vegetables. Explained why unfamiliar foods are often rejected, especially during childhood. Supported my exploration of how first impressions influence people's willingness to try vegetables. |
Do you dislike vegetables? Why? Is it because you dislike the vegetable itself, or are there other reasons?
Which vegetables did you dislike most as a child?
Do you still dislike them today? If not, what changed?
What is your earliest memory of eating vegetables?
Why do you think you disliked certain vegetables?
Did your family or school influence your opinion of vegetables?
Have you ever changed your mind about a vegetable? What caused that change?
Process
The first Layout version
I laid out the publication on its own first; at the time, I hadn’t considered that the subsequent visual style might be different.
Reflections：Aside from the visual style, I think the biggest problem is that the text is too long. For the literature review section, I need summarize it using interesting and humorous language，so，the audience would be more willing to read it that in a quick way.