According to pie artist Jessica, your creativity is a powerful asset. You can get a lot done even if you don't have a lot of tools and gadgets at your disposal. "When I started my career as a pie artist, the only baking tools I had at my disposal were my own two hands and a toothpick… And I am a firm believer that creativity in the kitchen is not gadget-dependant — you can make wonderful things, and have a blast doing it, with a very limited tool kit! Indeed, sometimes not having access to the right tools for the job is precisely what spurs on those wonderful discoveries, new techniques, and new baking formats," she told Bored Panda in an email.

"All that said, as I grew in my practice and started to become more efficient as a kitchen denizen, there were a few tools and gadgets that became indispensable to me. Not because they helped me develop my creativity necessarily, but because they cut down on time, frustration, and mistakes."

Jessica shared her top 3 kitchen tools and gadgets with us:

1. "A really excellent, and properly sharpened knife. Volumes have been written on the subject for anyone looking to go down the 'good knife' rabbit hole online, but suffice it to say, no single tool will have a greater impact on your speed, precision, safety, and—if you’re a food artist like me the level of fine detail you can achieve in your work!
2. A decent food processor. If you make a lot of dough or batter and you really care about consistency between batches, a food processor is an indispensable tool. It allows you to precisely measure how much you are blending certain ingredients, and with certain fussy culinary chemical reactions, that is a critical variable to know. It also helps you keep your ingredients cold, and cuts down the time it takes to combine them, which is very handy with recipes like pie dough where the clock is ticking on the fat melting and making your dough tough.
3. An oven thermometer. Knowing what temperature your oven actually is, and if it has 'hot spots' (if the temperature is higher in some areas of the oven than in other parts) may just be the final piece of the puzzle for anyone wondering why their bakes always turn out different from the recipe. It is rare for ovens, especially older ones, to heat precisely to the temperature on the dial in every part of the oven. If you find your dishes turn out over or underdone on occasion and you don’t know why, invest in a cheap oven thermometer! Then you can adjust the temperature up or down, or rotate your baking sheets during the bake to ensure the proper doneness."

Bored Panda was interested to hear the pie artist's thoughts on what kinds of baking tools and food packaging she'd wish were designed better. She was happy to share her thoughts on this.

"I was in a foreign city baking for a client and had to pick up ingredients that were not my usual brand for the gig. The sugar I bought came in a cardboard milk carton-type of package with a spout for pouring. I had never seen anything like that before and after easily pouring out precisely the amount of sugar I needed directly from the carton without spilling a grain, and then simply sealing it up with no bag clip or elastics or fumbling mess needed, I was gob-smacked," she opened up to us.

"Why isn’t every edible powder ingredient sold in a milk carton? It’s wonderful! And such a simple concept to make pouring and sealing your ingredients simple. Now I can’t open a bag of flour or a jar of baking soda without wistfully thinking about that strange and wonderful 'sugar in a milk carton' packaging."

Meanwhile, Jessica said she often wishes that it were easier to open cans of pumpkin filling and jars of olives. "Can openers are a pain in the butt, and glass jars with metal lids are often incredibly difficult to get open. Perhaps one day some genius will come up with an idea for a form of packaging that is air-tight and hygienic, robust and compact for shipping, environmentally friendly and economical, but that pops right open with a simple touch/twist/command. The person who can develop the patent for such a package will be very rich indeed. And people with motor function challenges will no doubt label them a hero!"

If you're interested in learning about baking, you can take a peek at Jessica's book 'Pies Are Awesome' and her online baking courses at 'PieSavvy.' In the meantime, check out her latest pie art posts on Instagram!

If you want to be a successful designer who creates quality products, then you really do need to put your customers first. You can’t get around the fact that you need to know your target audience extremely well.

What are their wants and needs? Their hopes and dreams? Their potential pain–points while using your competitors’ products?

When you start identifying what makes your customers tick, you can avoid some (though probably not all) potential design pitfalls.

You can conduct focus groups and show people various iterations of your product to see what they (dis)like and prefer. You can ask your colleagues, family, and friends for their input. And then sift through all the advice to see what’s actually good criticism and what’s just a matter of taste.

No matter how great an expert someone is, it’s so easy to get lost in your work that you no longer see the forest for the trees. An outsider’s perspective can really help you see some aspects you need to improve on that you might have missed.

However, that requires a measure of humility. It’s one thing to be confident in your skills and vision. It’s another thing entirely to be so arrogant as to assume that you can make no mistakes.

When your customers get their hands on a product that is miles better than anything else on the market, they’re more likely to be loyal to your brand. If you make their lives better, why shouldn’t they return for more quality products and services?

You basically risk alienating your customer base if you lean too much into either function or form. On the one hand, if what you’re offering isn’t at all practical or ergonomic but just a monument to your artistic vision, many people likely won’t buy your product. If the needs of your customers aren’t met, you’ve failed as a designer (even if you might succeed as an artist).

On the other hand, aesthetics are also important. If your product is extremely functional but god-awful to look at, you’ll have a hard time when it comes to marketing, advertising, and getting consumers to even glance at the item on the store shelf.

Sure, iterating your designs to be more appealing can be costly. But if you save too much at the cost of appearances, the awesome functionality of your product might never get the chance to be used in the end.

The r/GoodDesign online group is fairly niche. It’s a tight-knit community, currently standing at 33k members strong. Their main goal is to bring people’s attention to examples of truly great design, no matter where it’s found.

“Be it web-based or not, if the design is good, then post it,” the moderator team running the subreddit urges everyone.

Everything and anything you end up posting on the group should, in some way, be related to high-quality designs. If you go off-topic too much, you might end up getting banned. Sometimes, even permanently. It makes sense: it’s a design-focused community, after all.

In the meantime, all the members are encouraged to put in a bit more effort and post more or less original content. If you end up reposting images that were shared within the last month, they’ll be removed. Furthermore, you shouldn’t repost pics that are in r/GoodDesigins’s Top 100 of All Time.

Originally, r/GoodDesign was created all the way back in 2012, which was an entirely different era on the internet.

One of the moderators helping keep the community functioning properly, u/KingDrude, previously opened up to Bored Panda about his experience. He told us that he’d been following the group for a while before applying as a mod.

According to the mod, who has experience working with other communities, the workload isn’t all that huge because r/GoodDesign is a smaller group. He shared with us that he’s a big fan of “satisfying and innovative design.”

On top of enjoying the design-related content, he primarily loves working as a moderator in general, no matter the community.

Which of these awesome designs impressed you the most? Which of the things featured in this list would you actually consider purchasing? Do you prioritize function, form, or a bit of both when picking products?

What, to you personally, are the hallmarks of truly great design, dear Pandas? Let us know what you think in the comments.