Menosunocerouno

Menosunocerouno is a Mexican design agency that often works on restaurant branding, and these examples are from different projects, but I really like the running black and white style throughout. Time to get designing!

Red Stripe

Red Stripe is an American Brasserie menu design by fresh oil. I was drawn to this because of its black and white design, but in looking more closely, I hope my layout isn't as busy as this, as I think white space is a necessity, as a customer doesn't want to be overpowered by a block of text.

Korn Design

These may be identity designs applied to stationery, not menu designs, but I am really drawn to the simplicity of the layout, colours and shapes. I particularly like the use of narrow fonts, like The London Hotels design below, which is bold but takes up less space on the page, giving a spacious, clinical feel to the overall design. I am really inspired by this type idea and black and white theme for my own menu designs.

Ben Whitla's design for Champalimaud's identity below is another example of simlicity throughout a design that really works.

Alvin Diec

This Cakes and Ale restaurant menu by Alvin Diec, a graphic designer from atlanta, is another example of how difficult yet possible it is to work out a layout suitable for a menu design. There is a lot of text on a menu and they are often designed so that the list is centred or left justified like below to fit everything on. Yet Diec has managed to make it look subtle and not too text heavy by leaving white space where possible and creating a cover design with a light tint of black so that it sits back on the page.

Morrissey

Here is a simple, classy identity design for Milano restaurant by William Morrissey. I definitely think with a four star hotel, the simpler the better so this is a good example of the professional finish I want it to have. Even though I aren't designing the identity logo for the hotels, I still have the individual restaurants to design in a subtle, sophisticated style like this.

Nothing Something

I'd really like to keep a simple black and white theme throughout my menu designs, with perhaps a small introduction of colour to separate the hotel sets. This being said, I really like this design by Nothing Something for Magnolia Gastropub & Brewery, although it is quite busy with a lot going on. Separate attachments for daily menus might be a good idea like they have used below.

Julian

Nathaniel Cooper collaborated with Jordan Gray and Brent Anderson to design this menu for Julian restaurant. Again it is type driven, with no distracting imagery or fancy patterns.White space and neat layout is the key theme I want to focus on, like the example below.

This Black & White Masked Ball Invitation for the Shakespeare Festival below is also by Nathaniel Cooper. I'd like to combine this spot varnish finish for a cover design with the simple Julian design above to hopefully create a minimal, sleek menu design.

Nathaniel Cooper

This is a nice, clean cut menu layout that suitably fits in with the theme of the restaurant - something that is important to consider when I design the hotel menus.

Print decisions

I'm still at the early development stage of this brief, but I really want to give the menu design a professional and expensive finish, and high end print processes are something I do not know a lot about and need to research into further. Suggestions at the last crit were to use spot varnish, embossing or foil blocking, none of which I have done before but I want to know how. Here are some examples of how I want my designs to end up looking like using these techniques.

Found on frankel.co.uk; a printer's in London that show these as examples:

Too many fonts

Each restaurant within the Shire Hotel chain have their own name and each name has its own font. This to me is too confusing and I want to simple it down. I'm not changing the hotel logos, but I want a running theme for the menu designs, so each of these names will all be in the same typeface to tie them all together (as well as the Shire logo being included on each design). See my design practice blog for ideas so far.

Sudtipos

When looking on Sudtipos at various font designs, I came across many that are typically 'foody' like these two below. I don't want my menus to be ordinary and predictable, but they do need to meet the expectations of the customers staying in the hotels, so I will look into all sorts of fonts that could work as headings, body text, etc.

Hische

Ok, so I like Jessica Hische. And this design I came across is no less of a disappointment. The hand drawn lettering for the menu and identity design is unique and lovely. I am working with handmade designs for other current briefs, and I am looking more into digital type and layout designs for this one, but it's a way of showing that a menu design doesn't have to be bog-standard and plain.

The type on her wine bottle designs is also inspirational and has a classy restaurant feel to it offering many ideas of patterns and type for headings.

Prood

I have come across Sasha Prood's designs before and they are inspiration for a few of my current briefs. This little design is an example of how I could push the boundary of shape, layout of type, etc to really create exciting menu designs.

I Love Dust

ilovedust design showing prices for a hair salon. The sophisticated gold text on white makes it simple and effective - something that I hope to produce for my menu designs.

Type Jockeys

This is part of a corporate design project for the Marktachterl restaurant by typejockeys.com

Alessandri II

The standard of print that can be created is amazing, and I want this brief to focus on slick, sharp, type and layout driven prints as a range like these examples below. They aren't menu designs, but are in fact the development of a new corporate design for the Vienna Convention Center by alessandri design in germany.

 

...And designs that are part of another corporate presence project for the Esterházy estate.

Alessandri

A set of cooking workshop prints showing different scales for menu design by alessandri design.

Anyone for Dessert?

The hotel brand

This brief involves menu design for a small hotel chain of 7 hotels.

• Aztec Hotel & Spa - Bristol
• Cottons Hotel & Spa - Knutsford
• Kettering Park Hotel & Spa - Kettering
• North Lakes Hotel & Spa - Penrith
• Solent Hotel & Spa - Fareham
• The Millstone Hotel - Blackburn
• Thorpe Park Hotel & Spa - Leeds

Initial research shows that each hotel has a set of different menus, such as breakfast, lunch, snacks, a la carte, supper, dessert etc, so a range of designs will be created for each hotel.