OUGD603: DB1 - Menu Design

Design Brief 1 - Menu Design

OUGD603

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This was the start of the menu design, I brought the colours, illustrations, and typefaces from the brand guidelines over into the menu and started to place them within the document. Then I just experimented with different layouts with the title and the illustrations. I really liked the white background with the bright blue elements on top of the background with the black type. It made the menu easy to use and read and the grid which I placed on the background also will allow me to line up the menu details.

This was my next idea, I just developed my original idea a little bit by scaling up the illustration to fit all over the menu and then added a layer style on it to make it look like it was screenprinted. However as you can the type wasn't legible and it made the menu hard to read so I will not be continuing with this design.

This was my next menu design, I just stripped back my original ideas and just started by adding the necessary type and then designing around that. This made the design very simple and then I just added small details to make the overall design of the menu more interesting. For the back of the many me and Kira came up with the slogan 'rolled with love'. So I designed a piece of type to be placed on the back that incorporated one of the illustrations which ended up being the focus point of the back of the menu. Then I added all the secondary information to the menu like the location of the food truck as well as their website and Instagram. I also added the 'S' symbol at the back fo the menu to make it more visually interesting as well as I found if there is a lot of the blank blue colour it distracts your eyes so the 's' broke up the blue and allowed the readers eyes to focus. When I showed Kira the menu design we decided this was the menu we are going to move forwards with and use.

After producing the main menu I then went on designing the secondary menu for the customizable sushi the food truck sells. I decided to include it as second menu as there would of been too much information to be placed on one single menu unless we used the back but we didn't want to do this. I found some basic illustrations to use as placeholder for Kira illustrations but I designed a simple pick and chose section for this menu. Again I found if there is a lot of the blank blue colour it distracts your eyes so I added multiple 's' symbols to break up the blue and allowed the reader's eyes to focus. I showed Kira and she was happy with the design and concept so I need just to add the information to the menu and illustrations.

To the left is the original menu and then to the right is a secondary menu with the elements fully filled in as well as the illustrations from Kira. I also tried experimenting with colour to create further hierarchy within the menu. I achieved this by colouring the sub-titles as well as the prices of each of the boxes. I also tried the prices in stars however this was too much and at a small scale the prices may be hard to read.

To develop the menu further I removed the rectangle at the top right as it wasn't serving any purpose and making of the menu looked off-balanced. I also added all the information to the menu and reworked the bottom and turned it into a drinks section for the menu. The box also allowed the drinks logos to be display beside the drinks so the customer knew what brand of drink they were getting. During one of my weekly crits my peers said to change the illustration in the drinks section as it doesn't go. So Kira drew a drinks illustrations and I added that.