Behind the scenes of our new tibits campaign

The Swiss photographers Schaub & Stierli are the creative force behind our awesome veggie cities. We sat down with them to talk about challenges, food and trying new things.

What is the idea behind these beautiful shots of vegetable cities?
tibits is all about being hands-on with their yummy fresh and homemade menus. We wanted to illustrate their approach by showing hand carved veggie cities. They represent the world through the eyes of tibits!

Why did you go with the slogan “Natural energy for...”?
Its a nice play on the fact that eating at tibits is not only delicious but also nutritious and healthy for you. As a nice background detail, we even lighted the cityscapes with natural energy made out of lemons!

How do you make electricity out of lemons?
The sourness of a lemon, its acid, is not only refreshing when you cook with it, it's also a conductor for electricity. This is how a lemon battery works: You stick two differently charged metals, such as zinc and copper, in a lemon. The acid of the lemon now wants to even out these charges so it starts transferring negative particles from one pole to the other. If you connect the two metals, or poles, you get a little circle of energy going that can light LED lights or doorbells or what have you not. Its a neat little science project, don't you think?!

How many fruit and vegetables were used for the cityscapes?
All in all we used 71 different veggies, legumes, herbs and fruit!

How long did it take you to finish a cityscape?
It took a five weeks to do all the preparations and tests, find the perfect perspective and settle uncountable amount of specifics and details.
After that we put up the sets including lighting, background, water container etc. That took us two to three days more for each city.

What was the biggest challenge?
Getting the skylines right. You couldn't carve the veggies to small or you wouldn't recognize what they were anymore. On the other hand, we wanted as many details on the buildings as possible. So it was a bit of a balance act to get both right quickly so we could shoot the skylines before the produce started wilting.

What do you take away from the creative side of the project?
It was a huge learning curve for all of us – it definitely was something new and it took us way out of our comfort zone. This, however, is when true creativity is starting to flow. Much like our lemon batteries! We're very proud of the results. The idea as well as the look of those cityscapes encompass the spirit of tibits beautifully and go straight to the heart of what tibits is.