Kristin Becker's DTC Classes at WSU

For this blog post I decided to compare and contrast my menu with Camille Oppedal’s because it was the most appealing to me and it had similar ideas with my design in terms of font choices and layout design. When comparing my design to Camille’s design there are many similarities and differences that make each design appealing.

When looking at my design my eye tends to read left from right and in Camille’s menu design my eye starts from the center and then goes left to right. The more I look at Camille’s the more I noticed that my eye tends to look at the bottom portions first then the top portions. She has a ton of cute images that draw my eye to them first before I read the content. Each image really fits with her theme in terms of being hand drawn and black and white. Her images are probably my favorite part of her entire design, she does an awesome job at keeping everything together. Her visual hierarchy is very clear because she uses clear and bold titles to describe what each section is about and to add to the boldness she uses a hand pointing to the section she is about to add in order to make it clear and bold. Compared to my design, I did use clear and bold titles but I did not use a visual image to make anything stand out like Camille did with her design.

Comparing fonts we can see that I used a serif font for my titles and item descriptions but for my items I used a sans serif to create boldness and also to separate menu item from menu titles. I think my fonts are stylistically appropriate in terms of separating certain categories but if this were going to be a professional menu then I think I would rather keep it to either all sans-serif or serif next time. In Camille’s design she uses mostly serif fonts besides her menu titles and I think this is a perfect way to make her design stylistically appropriate because she still has her categories organized and separated properly while using a sans-serif for her titles only and everything under that is a serif font. I think her design looks very professional.

The overall visual style of my menu design is lacking a little bit especially when compared to Camille’s design, however, I do think that my design could fit with the rustic style of Paradise Creek Brewery because it is simple and to the point. Kind of how Paradise Creek Brewery is when you enter the establishment it is very simple with a subtle rustic feel, just like my design. Compared to Camille’s design I absolutely love it but I think the restaurant is not as classy as she is demonstrating in her design.

When looking at color, pattern, and texture within the designs you can notice right away when holding Camille’s design that she uses a thicker paper to give a nice texture and her section with the beige colored paper are glued on top to give that extra pop to her design. She uses beige and black to show a simple and classy design which is done very well and in terms of pattern she uses cute little swirls on the bottom of each section. Compared to my design, I used a card stock type of paper to give it a more professional look, I used black and white to be simple and classy and I didn’t really use any pattern other than the dots under the titles and the cute border around the “sides” section. For both designs I think the paper type is perfect however I think we both could have made our designs in a bigger paper size next time.

Overall I think both designs did a great job, but I will say that I think Camille definitely did a better job in every category discussed above. Camille’s strengths in her design are her demonstration of visual hierarchy and being able to keep everything into one theme. Her weakness would probably be the menu could be bigger. My design shows strengths in hierarchy and organization but I fall weak within the category of having a little more visual appealing images and there are some typos in my document.

Whitney’s menu

My menu

The menu I decided to compare and contrast to mine was Whitney’s menu because the contrast was visually apparent to her menu design compared to mine.  In addition, her menu was visually striking and pleasing.

In describing the visual hierarchy, both menu provides a clear and cut way of coming down from the top of the menu to the bottom.  The hierarchy in my menu is done through font size and the color establishment.  Whitney’s has a more distinct hierarchy that is apparent in how she separate her items.  Her menu is designed in a way that is done through several papers that divides each item into their category.  The title of the items are at the bottom so that flap acts as dividers between each category of items.  When opened, the item is organized from top to bottom and the description of the item is in smaller font compared to the dish.  This is also the same in my menu design where the food item is more bold and the descriptions are written in a lighter font color.

I was going for a more modern design of the menu so I chose a contemporary fonts called ADAM.GG and MOON while Whitney’s design incorporates more rustic style of typeface.  Her choice fits that rugged look her paper and the menu gives off while the modern style fits my design of the menu.

In comparison to the establishment where the location itself is more rustic, Whitney’s menu suits the style better as a pub and a brewery.  I, however, wanted to has a more progressive look to the menu that could benefit their establishment

In describing the color, pattern, and texture, Whitney’s design has more complex features.  Her paper that she chose to make her menu is more textile.  It has more personality and the feel of it feels like it has more substance.  Also, using multiple pieces of paper aids to the overall weight to the menu itself.  I simply used a printer paper because it was what I had to work with but the elements to give it meaning are all present.  In terms of color, because I used an image, the menu itself was more colorful.

In terms of text, I’ve used a combination of four colors in total; white, gray, black, and red.  Compared to my colorful elements, Whitney’s menu was more simple in color.  Mostly the paper was either white or the cover and the back was brown, a good indicator of like a wooden texture.  The colorful aspect of my menu makes the menu more pop and adds to the flavor of the vibrancy I wanted to take my design.  Whitney’s simple and dull colors add to the rustic feel she was going for as well.

The strengths of my menu is the vibrant colors that is pleasant to look at.  It falls short on its design elements where everything is very cramped.  The alignment and the proximity of my menu is very close together but that was intentional so I keep the menu short and simple.  Whitney’s design excels in the elegance feel that the paper’s texture gives and adds to the overall theme of the rustic brewery.

This menu design made by Kim Conway.

This menu design made by Sulaiman Ambusaidi.

This menu design made by Sulaiman Ambusaidi.

I am comparing my menu design with Kim Conway’s menu. Kim’s menu is very well organized and it is well balanced. When I saw it the first time, my eyes started to scan from the top to the bottom. She uses the bold blue text to represent each section which are the headers of the menu. Then, the contents of each section is organized by red text and under it the description of the order. The hierarchy is well used in this menu and the color is also making the hierarchy clear and easy to read. The fonts are all working very well because they are all serif fonts. The font makes the menu very easy to read.

On the other hand, my menu is also having a good hierarchy by using bold text. That makes it very easy to navigate thru the menu. The fonts are also serif in my menu so they are all working very well in the design. However, the style of my menu is much different from Kim’s menu. My style is like a book but Kim’s style is one page menu. Both styles are very well used in both menus.

The visual style of Kim’s menu is appealing and simple. This works very well with this type of menu. The drawing under the sides section is filling an empty space and it is well used in place. The colors of Kim’s menu is working very will with the background and they are also used to make hierarchy in the menu. On the other hand, my menu is less appealing because it is all dark. However, the contrast is very well because the background is dark and the text is bright. This makes it easy to read. Kim’s menu did not have a clear texture or pattern. However, my menu does have a background texture that makes the menu looks old.

Kim’s menu presented with one tall paper. It is nice to use one face on a menu but some times it gets too long like this menu. I think her menu need to make it little short so it will be easier to hold. Comparing to my menu, it has a very good size and it is much easier to hold in hand. The book style gives me more space to add contents to my menu and also it allows me to use bigger fonts for people who have eyes problems.

The strength for Kim’s menu is on the use of color for the hierarchy. It makes it much easier to navigate thru. Also, the use of light background makes it more appealing that my menu. The strength of my menu is on the menu style which is the book style. This style helps the customers hold the menu very easily. The other strength is on the size of the text. Using large text in the menu is very important because not all people have the same vision some of them cannot read the small text.

After looking at my classmates’ final menu design, I originally wanted to compare and contrast something that was similar to mine. Then I realized it would be more convenient to compare and contrast a menu design that was significantly different than mines. I decided to use Camille Oppedal’s menu design because she included some elements that I didn’t have. In the reading “Grapic Design The New Basics” by Ellen Lupton, and Jennifer Cole Phillips they mention the importance of hierarchy. Hierarchy is basically the order of what is to come first, middle and or last (Lupton & Phillips, 2008). The visual hierarchy is clear, each of these designs have recognizable titles, subtitles, categories, descriptions, sections, subsections; and so on, to help distinguish from one section from another. There’s awkward spaces happening on the back of my menu design and it wasn’t really balancing out in terms of spacing and alignment. Something that Camille did was add pictures which balanced out the menu design overall. The pictures that Camille used weren’t just random pictures, but pictures that correlated with the restaurant. She had a visual representation of the fireplace; which was located in the dining area of the restaurant. She also had a visual representation of beers, a hops plant and barrels of beer; which correlated with the company’s name “Paradise Creek Brewery”. I noticed that she didn’t use the original logo that the company provided on their website. Instead, she created her own type of logo using different fonts, adding extra elements and positioning things differently. I didn’t use the same logo that’s now on the official Paradise Creek Brewery menu today. I used their black and white logothat I found on their website. I knew that I would be limited to certain fonts based off this logo, but I was fine with that since I felt like the fonts that I used worked well together. This logo contained serif fonts; in which I also chose to use similar serif fonts in my design. I feel like both of these designs are stylistically appropriate because everything works together and balances out. There isn’t too much going on, and the fonts are easy to read. The designs present the company well; based off my visit to the restaurant. In my design, the colors I used were black and white; black being the main color. I used texture by incorporating a wooden background for the menu. There was a pattern going on just based off the placement of things and under the category titles I used these triangular shapes. Camille used graphics as a way to help incorporate texture and pattern in her design. She also used black and white, but white was the main color. Some things that I think that I could improve on with my design is spacing, and more usage of graphic elements. I think that if I spaced out more things and aligned them differently, then my menu design would look way much better. It looks sort of too spaced out causing it to look like I was just making up for the extra space that I had. Since that was the case, I should’ve decreased the dimensions so that it doesn’t looked spaced out in an awkward way. I’m so glad that I printed out my menu at Cougar Copies because I would’ve been stuck with just plain printing paper from the AML. I honestly didn’t even think to go over and beyond and find other textured papers to use when printing out my design. I believe that Camille’s choice of paper was good, I’m not sure if that was her original plan to use that paper or to have that size, but it worked out perfectly.

For my final reflection I chose to compare my menu design with Keisha’s.  When my eyes scan both our menus I see a similar hierarchy.  Your eyes get initially drawn to the name of the brewery which is the largest piece of text on the menu.  Then, again on both menus your eyes scan the different food categories due to the variation included in the food categories.  For my menu I changed the font from the name of the brewery but still chose a font that had similar characteristics, such as a sharper serifs and a more narrow style.  For Keisha’s menu she contrasted the font used for the name of the brewery two different ways, the first is she utilized a san-serif font instead of serifs and secondly switched from a solid print font to and outline font.  Then from the food categories we both kept variation within the categories. to make sure the hierarchy was prevalent.  In both of our designs we bolded the name of the dish and the price.  We also both designed our menus to have the descriptions of the food in a serif font so that it is easy to read.

For both our designs we both took the same approach to our fonts but applied them in different ways.  I tried to have some variation in my menus font.  This is why the brewery’s name is a different font than the rest of the menu.  Then I tried to find a similar font for the rest of the menu then varied it by styling it different ways such as bold or italics.  I would say my fonts are stylistically appropriate due to the fact they are the same style as each other and in a similar family.  I would also say Keisha’s fonts are also stylistically appropriate.  Even though her menu contains differing fonts with serif and san serif they still work due to the environment the establishment gives off.  I liked that her food category and food items are both in san serif fonts which really helps bring it together.

I think that both designs are geared for a relaxed establishment such as Paradise Creek Brewery.  I feel like Keisha’s design encompasses it more than mine does though.  My design is leaning more towards a minimalist feel.  I wanted to include some graphics in the menu but I also did not want the viewer to be over stimulated by images that would take attention away from the food.  I think that fear of overcrowding might have limited my options for my design.  Keisha also had minimal graphics but had more graphics incorporated than my design.  I think Keisha’s graphics were all very effective and gave the perfect amount of visual stimulation.

The texture of the menus definitely help tie them in to the restaurant.  With my menu printed on the blue parchment paper it helps soften up the vector graphics and the text so it is easier on the eyes, less contrasting.  The background/paper Keisha printed on made me think comfort and local which exactly matches the feel of Paradise Creek.

I would say Keisha and I both have really strong designs.  Both menus have a clear hierarchy present in them, they are both very easy to read, and they both have complimenting graphics that do not distract the user from the food.  I feel like my menu could be improved by adding a few more graphics into the design and I feel like I could have varied my fonts a little more than I did.  I feel like one improvement that Keisha could make is to not laminate her menu.  Lamination can help with the longevity of the menu but I feel like lamination directly contradicts the feel of Paradise Creek, besides the lamination I feel like Keisha’s menu is a vey strong design.

With my final menu design for Paradise Creek Brewery I wanted to include the atmosphere, looks, and feel of the restaurant/brew house. While listening to the small group presentations that were given in class I noticed that often people brought up the fact that it felt like a log cabin on the inside and I really wanted to make the menu match that feeling. So with that in mind I tailored my menu to fit that specifically. This is why I decided to include a picture of the woods/mountains/outdoors on the front and back cover. On the inside I wanted to give the menu and older feel like it might be found in the living room of an old ski cabin or lake house. So for that I made the background an older paper look that is a light brown/tan color with some ripples. For the text of the menu I wanted the front, back, and bulk of the text to be easily readable but still fit with the outdoors feel, so I chose a moderate typeface that had some flare to it but was still clean and readable. Over all I think that my final design incorporates both the feel of the restaurant and the specific aspects that I want wanted to bring forward.

I chose to compare my menu to Evan Taylor’s, Evan’s menu has a very different feel to it compared to mine. His is much cleaner and has more grids/lines with a more modern finish. I think both of our visual hierarchies are very clear, both being obvious to see what the name of the restaurant is, different sections, menu items and descriptions are. He does a similar idea to mine in order to establish his hierarchy by changing font and size, but I made my menu items a different color to make them easier to distinguish from the descriptions. I believe that both of out fonts are the right style for out menus, his is nice and clean all around matching the feel of his menu where some of mine is less clean and give off the more laid back feel of the outdoors. As I mentioned earlier Evan’s menu and mine are very stylistaclly different, his is very uniform and modern whereas mine is more geared in the opposite direction. I feel as if Evan’s menu is pushing for the brew house to rebrand its image, when I was in there I didn’t get a clean looking feel, it seemed very laid back and easy going feel which is more of what my menu goes for. In Evan’s design color, pattern, and texture play a huge roll in it, the color is all very coordinated and clean, the pattern is also clean cut and placed very precisely, furthermore that texture is a glossy finish that make it look very smooth. In my design they all play a large part too but in a different way, my colors are all brighter and are more made for contrast covering the entire page. I don’t have much of a pattern, compared to Evan, but all of my text is uniform and has rules that it fallows. For texture I feel that I have a lot more, the inside of my menu is supposed to have the feel of an older sheet of paper with ripples and crinkles. Evan’s menu I think is going for the compact clean look, which I defiantly does, it is very nicely held and easy to look at with the way it is printed. For mine the print style is much larger and meant to be a bit more spaced out and in clear cut sections. Overall I think that Evan did a fantastic job with his menu, it is very easy to read and I like the color combination. If I had to give a pointer or two for improvement I would fix the blue line and text on the back page so there is not overlap, cutting of the first letter of each line. Second I would try to lay out the menu so that Entrees aren’t on two separate pages, maybe move sides or salads over and have entrees start at the top of the second, inside page. With my menu I feel the strength is the matching feel of the restaurant and the nice layout that make it very simple while still getting its point across. My areas for improvement are probably the pictures, there a little blurry and I didn’t want that to happen.

As an aspiring author with one completed manuscript, I have spent the last two years following the publishing world, watching the current trends and comparing my favorite books to those being published now.  When the opportunity arose in this course to design my own book cover, I was excited and a little overwhelmed.  My novel straddles two contrasting genres (general fiction and fantasy) and two reading levels (young-adult and adult).  I have had enough difficulties finding the right words to pitch my book to agents and editors, but trying to capture my story in a visually pleasing design was a whole new challenge.  Eventually, I settled on three drastically different cover design options.

Most book cover designs I researched fell into three style categories, they were either graphic (made primarily with computer generated bold imagery and stylized font choices), photographic (composed of realistic and altered/enhanced photo images) or art based (the primary focus of the cover art being a painting or other styles of digitized physical artwork).  These were the three different styles I tried to use when designing my book covers.

Graphic Art Book Cover Design.

This first book cover was my attempt at a graphic design.  It was design entirely in Illustrator and was the most challenging due to the simplicity I was trying to achieve.  I chose a simple image that has meaning in the story, a road, and tried to make that image graphically interesting and appealing.  My goal with this cover design was to leave the genre of the book deliberately vague while appealing to a wide range of readers, both young-adult and adult.  I do not believe I was successful in capturing an adult audience with this book cover design.  While it is simple and memorable, it lack a sophistication that is necessary to immediately attract an adult reader.  My font choice, while I believe it is appropriate as I wanted it to appear like chalk drawn on pavement, appears a bit childish.  I also wonder if I should have attempted for a bit more abstraction in my image choice.  Simplicity in graphics is important and used extensively in book cover design, however while I believe my road design is simple, it is not interesting in a sophisticated way that draws eyes and keeps attention.  If I were to redo this design I would attempt to apply some abstraction to the concept of the road to add interest while not adding complexity.

Photoshop Image Book Cover

My second book cover design is photographic in that I used two open source photo images and altered them using Photoshop.  I have worked with Photoshop extensively outside this course so it was not too challenging to work with layers and opacity to achieve my desired image.  This is my favorite book cover design as it captures the central theme of the book in its mystery and fire while also clearly showing this book is about a young girl. This cover to me is strictly a young-adult novel cover, however it does successfully straddle the line between fantasy and general fiction.  I like the balance achieved in this design where the image and the title have equal weight and don’t detract from each other. I also enjoy the use of several different fonts.  I used a font style reminiscent of a classical typewriter to ground in reality the text of ‘My Life’ but used a watery messy ink style font for ‘Elsewhere’ to capture that essence of fantasy and offer the visual question of how real or solid is ‘Elsewhere’ compared to ‘Life’.  For the rest of the text on this cover I used a clean san-serif font that I thought was clear and easy to read and complimented but did not compete with the two font choices on the front cover.  A small thing that made me happy as a designer was the use of the same typewriter style font in the author name.  This is deliberate because in the story there is a twist at the end where you learn that the protagonist is also the author.  Using the same font is a subtle hint at this, but also easily overlooked.
In this design I also used Illustrator’s pattern tool to add a soft water-ripple pattern to the varying blues of the cover.  I think the pattern helped add interest and tie the book design together visually.

Watercolor Art Book Cover

In this last book cover I experimented with a physical medium using watercolor and ink to attempt to draw my main protagonist.  I’m fairly happy with the results as I’m not a water color painter.  Her eyes being uneven bothers me most, but given that it was my first attempt at painting a person with watercolor, I am happy with the results.  I photographed this image and brought it into Photoshop to do some simple color adjustments and to make two layers of the painting, one with the foreground (my protagonist with the sword and flame) and one with the background blue colors.  Between these two layers I added a custom pattern design I created with Illustrator.  This pattern design I wanted to mimic flame and just add a bit of interest and unity between the painted image and the side panels.   This cover design I feel is reminiscent of an older style classical fantasy book cover.  If you look at fantasy books published in the late 90’s or early 2000’s, many of them use similar art style choices.  For the font on this cover I chose something that I felt was classic and had some fantasy elements in the dramatic serifs and stretched x-heights.  The text I chose for the inside flap on this book cover is also different because I didn’t feel this cover could be construed as non-fantasy, so I embraced the fantasy aspects of my story and wrote a truthful, but different, summary.  I also experimented with text placement on the back cover where I placed a common quote from the book but split it up to fit inside the white portion of the flame. I think it is visually interesting and is successful in this example, however I feel that a longer quote would not have worked in this space.

Overall, I enjoyed creating these three different book cover designs and believe each is successful in its own unique way.  Of the three, my favorite is the photographic image cover because I feel it is the most representative of my story.  However, design wise, I do prefer my last art based cover, because I really enjoy how mixing the softness of watercolor art with the clean lines of Illustrator created patterns made a cohesive and visually appealing book cover.