TITLE
Hip Chef
CLIENT
UWE Final Year Project
YEAR
May 2021
DESCRIPTION
Goal Hip Chef was created to explore and satirise millennial food trends, highlighting how modern diets have evolved into lifestyle statements influenced by online culture and marketing. It uses humour to prompt reflection on consumer habits, ethics, and branding. Role As the designer and creative lead, I oversaw the project from concept to completion—designing handcrafted food props, bold packaging, and video content. My focus was on balancing humour with critique to build a visually compelling and culturally relevant brand. Outcome Hip Chef became a vibrant commentary on millennial food culture, merging handcrafted design, satirical branding, and short films. It encourages audiences to reflect on their own behaviours while questioning the influence of trendy diets and marketing tactics
Label Designs
Hip Chef’s packaging highlights the deceptive nature of modern millennial food trends. The front is overloaded with bold, trendy “buzzword” stickers, while the back exposes deliberately awful ingredients and misleading nutrition labels. Paired with handmade wooden food props and a custom vacuum-formed container, the design satirises how wellness branding and aesthetic marketing can disguise what consumers are actually buying.
Process
Every element of Hip Chef was handcrafted to reinforce the project’s satirical commentary on food culture. The “meals” were made from laser-cut plywood, then hand-painted and varnished for a hyper-real, comic finish. I built the container using a custom wooden form and a vacuum former, and designed the packaging using photography, illustration and digital design. All stickers were created in Procreate and styled to mimic the deceptive labelling found in modern wellness and diet branding.
Hip Chef Adverts
The Hip Chef advert uses bold visuals and playful narration to parody millennial food culture. Written, directed, filmed and edited by me, it highlights the contradictions in trendy diets, with a professional voiceover by Tom Clarke-Hill adding to the satirical tone.
