Promoting local and seasonal food 🌱

We initiated freilich! (German for "sure!" or "of course!") as a team of three, later four, design students at the University of Applied Sciences Munich. We wanted to learn about food production, engage with ideas for more sustainability and promote appreciation for local and seasonal food.

During the project we organized workshops and a pop up farmers' market. We invited students, locals and professors to build an urban garden behind our faculty and used the harvest for community lunches/dinners at uni.

The small garden became a meeting hub and was added on to by a new generation of students: Our efforts were a precursor to the university's urban gardening seminar being established in 2016.

The design

The name, logo and visual identity of freilich! were developed during intense and productive meetings in a short amount of time. We decided to limit ourselves to black on white and use colours only in the form of small watercolour blots.

We chose a simple illustration style (and all-caps handwriting) which all four of us would be able to execute – accepting that there would be inconsistencies and imperfections. We wanted the design of freilich! to be rooted in the ideas of DIY, collaboration and openness while conveying a spontaneous, sympathetic and accessible character.

We used posters and leaflets with illustrations and recipes to inform students about the seasonal fruits and vegetables of the month.

We set up a simple website as well as social media pages to coordinate events.

The instagram account:

Cooperations

When we wrote down our goals and purpose for freilich! we expressed our hope to be able to connect with other initiatives. This proved to be easier than we initially thought, since many people involved in similar projects were eager to collaborate and combine ideas.

PlantBuddies

One project that developed from my work for freilich! was my contribution to the PlantBuddies companion planting website. This open source website, developed by Botho at Permaculture Commons, helps gardeners by matching plants with their "buddies" – other crops that can be planted in proximity for various benefits.

I contributed over 100 illustrations for the different fruits and vegetables (licensed under CC BY-SA).

I also created an "old school web" repeating background.

Conclusion

freilich! as a project was interesting because we were using design as a starting point to ultimetely do "non-design-y" things: reaching out to others, initiating collaboration, shaping interaction.

• Links
• Old website on the Internet Archive (beware of glitches and dead links)
• Project info
• Free project, University of Applied Sciences Munich, 2015-2017.
• What I read at the time: Transformationsdesign by Bernd Sommer, Harald Welzer