Food trucks are not often associated with cutting-edge design, but that may change after Black Squid Designs’ graphics for the “cheeky and playful” foodie truck Delectaballs won a top South Australian design award.

The firm has created instantly recognisable artworks for the Adelaide-based food truck, with clean, linear doodles in biro-blue plus accents in red and white decorating the Delectaballs’ truck, packaging, signs and website.

So impressed were judges at the 2013 Design Institute of Australia’s South Australian Design Awards that the graphics won the prestigious President’s Award.

Black Squid managing director and founder Derek Butler said Delectaballs had sought a “fresh and exciting” look and brand, with hand-rendered designs to suit its philosophy of hand-made healthy meatballs.

“A simple yet strong palette of blue and red kept the brand looking clean, while distinct,” he told InDaily.

“Food-related, ball-related, moving, eating – all typical of a food truck.”

The truck was founded out of necessity and frustration when Delectaballs’ owners were unable to find a suitable spot for a bricks-and-mortar restaurant.

“The whole concept we had designed was for the restaurant, so we applied it to the food truck,” Butler said.

Instead of being on “pristine white crockery”, the designs would instead be applied to cardboard throw-away food boxes and the sides of the truck.

Black Squid’s designers gave the Delectables team a full range of branding which can be flexibly applied – for example, should the dream of a bricks-and-mortar restaurant ever eventuate.

That flexibility, Baker says, also reflects the philosophy of a travelling food truck that constantly changes what it calls its “menu balls”.