Burnside Pod
My client is the owner of a popular Food Cart Pod in Downtown Portland. All of the Food Carts are owned and operated by Families, most of them immigrants, who bring family recipes from around the world. The owner wanted to create a booklet (or Zine) showcasing each Cart. I photographed each Food Cart and spoke to the owners about their food. I asked each for a recipe and included these in the Zine. We also used a few pages to show some before and after’s of the site telling a history of downtown Portland. The Zine serves as not only a marketing tool for the Cart owners and the Pod but also a chapter in the history of the site, the city and the Food Cart history in Portland.
The work was motivated by a conversation I had with the owner about the history of the site and food carts in Portland. Food Carts have been a prominent part of the city for many years, and it provides small business owners a step into the market without the large expense of a brick and mortar. Their existence in our city has been compromised many times but large corporations and businesses wanting to either push out the carts to use the real estate or to large restaurants in the area being threatened by the competition. Most of the carts in the owner’s pod were actually moved from a well-known Pod that was demolished in favor of a multi-billion-dollar high rise that is currently bankrupt. Having a passion for these Food Carts and the history of the city in general we thought this zine would be a great way to platform the Carts in a unique way. I have previously made zines of my own work and I used those to illustrate what it could look like. The owner is a big history buff and supplied all the historical photography.
First I met with, photographed and did mini interviews with the owners of each cart pod. Then I edited the photos and worked in InDesign to design the Zines. Then I worked with a company online to print them.
