Abstract
This paper examines how aesthetically appealing food can present a different perspective other than the well-known fields of nutritional science. Over the years, there has been a tremendous transformation of cakes from a fancy sweet pastry to a work of fine visual art that communicates meaningful stories translated from ideas to actual creativity. As a qualitative study, the work adopted the purposive sampling technique to analyse four selected cakes using the three Meta functions of representational, interactive, and compositional meanings while the theoretical framework was grounded on Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (2001/2006) Grammar of Visual Design (GVD). The paper found out among others that cakes in the contemporary society have been transformed into visual story telling mechanisms that communicate life experiences from different perspectives with the colours that adorned them, performing aesthetical and symbolic functions in visual communication. Furthermore, unrelated elements logically assembled to form the cake design also perform a communicative function by conveying complex information as well as connecting the audience with the story both emotionally and cognitively through their visual, spatial and symbolic elements. The paper concludes that cakes tell stories that embody social, cultural and institutional meaning of value, belief and convictions.
Keywords: Cakes, Celebration, Communication, Grammar of Visual Design.
