In the autumn of 2017, Verda Alexander, one of the founders of the San
Francisco design firm Studio O+A, brought a team of designers together
for a project outside the company's comfort zone. After twenty-seven
years of creating groundbreaking workplace environments for high-profile
corporations, Verda felt the call of a different kind of design. Her
idea: Buy a food truck, turn it into a mobile design studio and take it
on the road to partner with communities on small, ad hoc projects. Her
goal: to bring the benefits of good design to places that hadn't
experienced it and to bring back new perspectives on what "good design"
might be. This book is the story of how that all worked out. Beginning
with the first kick-off meeting and continuing through the life of the
project, Food for Thought Truck chronicles the conceptual highs and
real-world lows of turning an idea into a reality. Told in the lively,
often comic vernacular of O+A's SOMA office, this story of how design
actually happens captures the personalities and passions of Verda's team
and the day-to-day practicalities of getting a project on its feet. The
book is lavishly illustrated with sketches and schematics of the truck
as it evolves and with documentary photography of its designers in
action. When the truck takes to the road in San Francisco, San Jose,
Bakersfield and Los Angeles, what started as one innovator's dream
becomes an adventure shared by many.
