Building the next Pixar
Fast Company talked to a number of ex-Pixar employees about how they are using lessons learned at Pixar in their new endeavors.
“Delight” may be an intangible concept, but it’s a useful term to describe Pixar’s relationship with its audience, and one that any company can strive for even if they don’t make heartwarming cartoons.
It seems counterintuitive that simple pleasure would be a core principle of something as elaborate as a Pixar production, but Suzanne Slatcher says she has translated this idea directly to her new career.
“Food is a bit like cartoons,” says Slatcher. “It’s not some high-minded thing that people will make themselves like because they think they ought to. The food has to work on that very simple level of just someone is watching TV and they’re shoving it in their mouths.”
The idea that “everybody deserves quality” is a fundamental Pixar concept that Slatcher applies equally to snack foods.
“Pixar makes amazing, beautiful, hilarious, deep, wise films for kids, and adults can watch them and everybody watches them 25 times if they’ve got kids, and it’s still funny. It’s really, really great quality, where most things made for kids are made very cheaply. A lot of time and money is spent making the most accessible thing possible, and that’s such an inspiration and so not what you learn at art school,” Slatcher says. “The Good Bean could choose to be the darlings of the foodie world, using obscure, exotic spices, trying to be clever, but we’d rather make affordable, accessible food.”
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