TypeOne is a UK magazine about typography. We were invited as guest editors for the 9th issue, to focus on typography through the lens of packaging. After debriefing with the TypeOne team, we agreed to dedicate the issue to packaging for food and drinks and to delve further into the broader ecological and cultural implications connected to food. Our task as guest editors was to decide the overall themes, invite different contributors and people connected to the topics of the future of food in various ways, and weave it all together within the editorial structure. The work also included briefing writers and other contributors, selecting images, making material choices, writing the editor’s letter, and as ‘idols’ of Issue 9 (a studio interview at the end of the magazine), we were also tasked with designing the cover.

The volume offers a deep dive into the food industry’s ecological, cultural, and political impact. Living in a time of ecosystem collapse due to human activity, we used the opportunity to go beyond type and open the conversation to acknowledge the broader ecological implications of our work, with the ambition to provoke critical thinking about design's role, especially in the food industry. We believe that by choosing the food we eat, we intrinsically support the people and structures producing it. Through 136 pages, we brought together an array of voices from designers, food critics, and chefs, to challenge the idea of waste, explore innovative refill solutions, resist “business as usual”, dissect the new grocery, and the role of design and typography in shaping perceptions. For the opinion piece “Love letter to food” we chose to feature family recipes from all the contributors, celebrating cooking as a creative discipline, showing the multiplicity and complexity of food cultures.