Menu Design

I was presented with an opportunity to create a menu design based on a catering company's website, from their color scheme, typography choice and website elements, I created a mind-map and came up with the words: distinct, refined and personal as my visual keywords. Their website was very unique in that the designer created a webpage that really told a story of the experience a customer would have when working with this catering company, therefore I came upon the keyword: distinct. Included in a section are their testimonials which you can tell is very important to this company because it used their personal type choice created just for them and used across their webpage as headlines and the section is distinctive in a separated different background design choice for visitors to easily find and have their eyes drawn to this section. Reading their testimonials I felt like their customers think of them as life savers. Coming in to save the day. Creating a great corporate dining experience or beautiful wedding and even giving location recommendations to places the catering company has worked with. 

However, I was not given a brief nor more direction other than the website therefore I was wary of straying away from their somewhat monotone color scheme of a light green background paired with dark green text with delicate serif details. So for the first designs I focused on what they gave me and created a safer menu set using only elements from their website. I was not given this font family that was designed by a graphic designer for their exclusive use therefore I used Adobe Illustrator's Retype tool to find the most similar typeface (Swear Display) I could use for the general direction I was going.

Another idea I explored when I ran out of design ideas using elements from their website was checking out the menu item names. Seeing food items like Kabobs, lots of herbs and certain fruits, and also names like Tartlets, The Herbalist and Wood Grilled made me think Sunny, nice weather and reminded me of a Spring Wedding and therefore without further direction, I decided on a second, more creative direction of Spring as my theme and came up with a mind-map and new visual keywords for further designs. This would be my creative menu design option I offer to the client in addition to the more solemn and on-brand menu designs offered above.

After exploring a lot of wedding menu options, I had a mental image of the designs I could create using my iPad to hand draw illustrations using Procreate. Thinking of the words Passionate and Nature and how I could make these illustrations create a modern look within the menu paired with the text, I chose to take inspiration from blossoming lily flowers and butterflies.

Playing with illustration placement within InDesign and using Illustrator's Image Trace tool to clean up the lines for a simple illustration that doesn't bring too much attention away from the text and also switching the orientation from center-aligned to left and right aligned and separated into sections based on the Buffet, Pastries and Bar Menu options I created at least 20 menu designs and even played with the A4 design in addition to the more traditional skinnier menu option. I was not sure if I was allowed to switch up these options and create other main headers like Main Courses, Appetizers, To Share or if I had to keep these three subsections so this would have been a point of back and forth with this client to determine if it was a part I could be given more freedom with in the design.

Another issue is that on the screen the lowered opacity seems a lot more darker than after I printed a sample therefore a stage where I sit down and decided on the suitable opacity with the client was also essential. When printed, I could barely see the flower detail therefore the opacity could be higher unless the client was happy with this level of subtleness so as to not pull attention away from the main part of the menu: the food names. 

A very interesting detail I came up with when playing with their brand name was to have their name repeated in a circle and placed at the very top, to save space I placed it meticulously so that it was far enough away from the text so as to not be too busy looking and still visible so people could tell that it was a repeated design but that the full name could still be read. The idea is that when the menu is being handed out that the receiver would be only able to read the brand name clearly before turning the menu to face themselves and being able to read the entire menu right-side up.