Kristin Becker's DTC Classes at WSU

I decided to compare my menu with Rachel Bigler’s as we both used folding in our presentation in order to separate and distinguish hierarchy, but I feel like we approached it differently with resulting strengths and weaknesses. In both menus, columns are used as the primary way to separate information.

This is the inside of my menu design

This is the outside page of my menu design

Since her pamphlet is more of a “book” style (two facing pages) and mine is a three-column style, she used only 2 columns to present the menu options on the inside pages, whereas I used 3 columns, the inside pages and the back flap which folds in.

Here is the example of how the text spills over onto the next page on Rachel’s

Here is the inside page of Rachel’s menu

Since I utilized more columns, I had less rows of information on one page and was able to give each section its own page (aside from salads and sides, which were both rather short sections.) Her design was able to compensate for the longer rows and multiple sections on a page by using longer pages, which works, but also feels a bit cumbersome to hold and can make the menu seem overwhelming. For the most part, each section resides on a single page, aside from the burgers and sandwiches section, where one item (Chicken Pesto Wrap) is bumped onto the next page before the Entrées section. This, in my opinion, disrupts the established hierarchy a little bit and loses some of the otherwise very uniform formatting of the menu.

Here you can see how I indented and used the tab to give hierarchy to the menu text

However, in Rachel’s menu, everything is center aligned which maintains the uniformity and makes it easy to determine which dishes correspond with which information and price, so the hierarchy is not confusing or visually discordant. In my design, I justified everything to the left, but made indentations to separate the menu information and smaller font to make it clear it was descriptive text on the dish. I also separated price with a dotted tab line as a stylistic choice to balance out the space of the menu and refrain from seeming to heavy on the left.  The dotted lines may be somewhat awkward at times to follow and difficult to distinguish, though. Also, because some of the descriptive text included information on additional costs, there had to be a way for me to distinguish these costs (such as with the “hand-cut potatoes on the side”) from the regular pricing, so I went ahead and made the lines shorter to fit in with the more condensed paragraph style of the descriptive text. I recognize that using dotted tabs, especially with multiple lengths, can be chaotic and a bit hard to follow at times, so I think this is a weakness of my menu.

Here is where you can see the texture making the text a bit hard to read at certain parts on Rachel’s

Overall, I think the visual styling of Rachel’s menu fits in nicely with the restaurant’s aesthetic in a way that recognizes its individuality but keeps it sophisticated. While the headings are serif and looks more traditional, the body font is sans-serif and therefore easy to read against the pattern. The grey wooden texture on the front and back pages (and border of the inside pages) denotes the antique, homey style of the establishment, but lends a more modern and classy touch with the monotone color choice. The inside texture almost looks like stone, which I think is a nice touch because it harkens back to the marble flooring of the location, which used to be an old post office. While I think the textures are nice and give personality and stay true to the establishment, I do think the opacity or saturation could be turned down a bit, just for legibility, as the white grains on the inside pages are a little difficult to distinguish from the white text in some places.

For my menu, the font is mostly opposite from Rachel’s, with sans-serif as the section header font and serif as the body font.  I feel like this puts more emphasis on the titles in a bold way, and is good for quickly scanning. The texture of my menu is mainly tactile from the thicker, sturdier kinds of paper I used. The inside yellow paper I printed on contrasts against the black border paper nicely without being too harsh as a white paper may be, and also feels more aged and refined. Patterns are seen in the black and white illustrations, as decorative borders, markers, or just general additions that bring a sense of vintage style and history that I think exemplifies the historic location well.

Here is the front page logo made from illustrations and a patterned border I found

Here is a pattern/border around a block of text

Here are the patterns of the hand symbol to denote titles

I do think that the biggest problem with my menu is sizing and formatting of the yellow paper against the black, as I encountered some spacing errors upon printing and was unfortunately short on time in order to correct that. I also think Rachel may have had a similar time restraint/printing issue, as her pages appeared to have been printed separately and glued together rather than printing front and back. I think both of our menus would benefit from more careful printing and preparation in order to appear more professional in the future.

For the purpose of this blog post, I will be comparing and contrasting Sophie Stoltman’s menu design and mine.

Below are images of my menu redesign.

Below are images of Sophie Stoltman’s menu redesign.

Hierarchy:

I think both menus do a great job of displaying the hierarchy of the copy. Sophie specifically uses the front of her menu to show the non main course items like appetizers, soups, salads, and sides, and strategically placed the main course items on the back so that you don’t have to flip back and forth to decide what you wanted for dinner.

The menu I created shows hierarchy by displaying categories on different pages in the order you would consume them throughout a course: appetizer, salad, entree, etc. I think this increases readability for the customer, but can lead to that customer not looking at all of the items offered because they have to flip through too many pages.

On the front side of Sophie’s menu, my eye goes directly to the Paradise Creek logo she added, and then follows to look at the appetizers. I think this flow is smooth, and could potentially encourage customers to order an appetizers more than my menu would. When looking at the menu I designed, your eye goes to the front page with the logo, and then doesn’t have a specific place for the customer to look. By having separate pages for each category, I am allowing the customer to choose what they want to look at rather than forcing them to read the appetizers next. This has its perks because organization is simple, but could also have a lot of downfalls in not showcases items on the menu that the restaurant could be trying to drive sales in (i.e appetizers).

Fonts/Typography 

Both menus use a similar font for the main content. It is a thin sans serif font with rounded corners that keeps the menu looking clean and modern. This font is similar to the modern menu I analyzed for the Art of the Menu critique.

Sophie chose the stylistic approach of not using the Paradise creek logo, and using the same font she used for the main content to display the Paradise Creek name. This choice makes her design consistent, but lacks visual diversity. I think her design looks great, but I prefer the main logo to be showcased on a menu. The font I chose is slightly thicker than Sophie’s, but I think it is the only way I could get away with using a completely different font style than what was used in the logo.

Visual Style

Sophie’s menu is modern, sophisticated, and clean. The use of white space makes the menu easy to read, and feels fresh. I love the design, but I have doubts that it represents the style of Paradise Creek well. The textural and visual element of the beer hop in the background is a nice touch, but makes the restaurant seem like an upscale new age brewery, not a home town brewery.

My menu also utilizes a lot of white space, and I think if printed on white paper, it would have a similar problem to Sophie’s of seeming too new.  A simple touch of adding the brown paper for the front and back cover I think adds a texture and dimension that the menu would have lacked if printed on white card stock. I think that even my design could have done more to capture the essence of Paradise Creek, but i believe the menu I designed will remain “stylish” for years to come. The addition of a background texture to the main pages could have cluttered the space and and been counter productive to the clean look i was going for. My effort to make the menu feel more rustic and homey comes in the form of the hand drawn icons used at the top of every page. I thought this additional style would brig the menu back to a handmade feel rather than a mass produced modern menu.

Presentation

These two menus are completely opposite in size. Mine is right on the border of being too small to read, and Sophie’s is quite large and on the border of being too big to hold. The font used in my menu is 10pt which looking back probably could have been bumped up to 12pt. Sophie’s is quite large, probably closer to 20pt or 30pt, and has the potential to come off as too in your face. The shinny white paper that Sophie used was great quality and looked beautiful, but could have represented the feel of Paradise Creek better if it was printed on a matte paper as opposed to a glossy white paper.

My menu is printed on a matte card stock, which is nice, but caused some problems with the printers. The front page because of the texture and weight of the paper didn’t print well, and you can see the faded ink on the logo. In a way, this adds to the “aged” look of the menu, but can also come off as sloppy.

Overall

Overall, I love the white space and simplicity of Sophie’s menu, but think there is room for improvement in the size of the font, paper size, and paper material. When it comes to the menu I designed, I appreciate the uniqueness, but think it is bordering on too small, and the printing could have been higher quality.

This is a photo I took of Lloyd Proctor’s menu in class

For this blog post I decided to compare and contrast my menu with Lloyd Proctor’s because it seemed to be the most different from mine as far as style. This menu in my eyes was very successful in bringing a sense of hierarchy of information, which was easy to notice right when you look at it. It held a lot of what we talked about in class that a menu needs such as flow and style, which is also what I tried to accomplish with my menu design, and just like mine it had a lot of strengths and some weaknesses.

When it comes to flow my eyes moved through each column reading down the right side then down the left. It gave off the impression that there was definitely a grid that was used when creating this design. Which both compares and contrast with my design because I did have a simple grid but it only consisted of a singular column instead of two. One thing I also really liked was the titles for each section of food because it not only showed hierarchy but also if this were actually in the restaurant it would be easy to go down the list and just read the titles to find the category of food I was interested in. Some things I did notice that affected my reading of the menu, however, and made it a tad confusing is down at the bottom of the front page in the “soup” section the “cup 3” blends in with the description of the soups so you don’t notice it as you scan and can only see the “bowl’ option . Also, the “head chef” portion blends in with the different options for “soup”. I also realize that I left out the head chefs in my menu which is something I should have been more attentive about when transferring the information over from the word doc. Overall, however, the size of the fonts definite helps create a hierarchy to items and also helps with the flow and movement of the page.

When it comes to the style of the menu it greatly differs from mine, although, I think both ours capture the style that the restaurant has. For mine I tried to use a lot of textures that I found while visiting the restaurant. One thing that really stood out to me when I was there was the use of chalkboards, so my design was based off of that. Whereas, you can tell that Lloyd’s design was more based of the simple comfort of the restaurant. Although there is not a lot of texture within his design I think that the choice of fonts really captures the essence of the restaurant because they are sharp and professional but still have a brewery type of feel in the way they are laid out. I also think that the use of the logo helps to give it that type of look as well. One last thing that differs from my design is the print out decisions. For mine I wanted it to be more like a small booklet that was skinny and had a simple grid, which I think was also the idea for Lloyd’s, but we both achieved it in different ways. To me, although food seemed important for the restaurant, the main purpose for their brand was to sell their beer and be a brewery. So, I thought that a small and simple, yet professional, looking booklet would best fit the brand. I think that this simplicity for a printout was also something that was considered during the design of Lloyd’s menu, although I think an improvement on his could be to make it less simple.

Overall, I think that both our menus did a good job at presenting the style of the restaurant and have a flow that works for the way we printed and set everything up. These designs are very different but I could see them both working in the actual menu as long as the minor detail issues were changed within the text.

The Paradise Creek Brewery had a lot of different elements and design concepts that were focused on by each designer. These elements and concepts were then adopted, interpreted and used to design the different menus we as a class created. The elements that I noticed while at paradise creed was the wide range of brown shades throughout the building. This was largely due to the variety of wood types that made up the frame, furniture, and bar tops. Another element present in the brewery was texture, both physically and visually. The wood grains rigid and rough texture, the smooth chalk board surfaces and marble that added both a traditional and sophisticated appearance in the building. Aside from the visual elements in the brewery, the atmosphere and audience there was considered in the different menu designs. The atmosphere at the brewery when I was there, which was on a Friday afternoon around 1:30pm, was very unexpected. The expectation was a very mature audience type that would be interested in what most brewery’s offer which is alcoholic beverages, more specifically beer. However, there were mostly families but as the night progresses the atmosphere changes to a more mature audience, which was reflected in the menu design.

My menu design was simplistic and definitely catered to the more mature, but simple and classic crowd. I did not want any unnecessary touches that would overly complicate the design. I wanted the menu to fit well with the location and a brewery setting. I used black, white and different shades of brown in my design for the different labels and text based sections. The spacing was minimal, but accurate and with that gave a clean and simplistic result. My header was meant to be easily legible and minimal while also bold. I placed a wheat plant on the end to compliment not only the Palouse but also a beer based product that the company often uses, this also started the hierarchy of placing important information at the top. I chose a portrait layout, printed front and back to support traditional standards of what most readers are accustomed to. By making the text simple and easy to read, the layout only made it that much more legible.

Menu designer, Sophie Stoltmon had a very different design than my own. She chose to cater towards to more sophisticated and elegance side of the business, which was not heavily represented in the building, but still present. The trimmings and marble lining along some of the walls, which remained from the old post office that the brewery was built from is where I’m assuming Sophie pulled her inspiration from. I favored her design above the others because it was very minimal and clean. The text was divided into three different sections of information. As the sections went from the left to right which also caters to how people traditionally read, the important information came first. The text was thin, evenly places and very easy to read and understand. The prices were easy to identify and were clearly prioritized in a simplistic manor by using brackets that separated the text from the price number. Her design unlike my own had a large wheat design that spanned along a large portion of the menu and catches the eye easily. Sophie did not choose to use the expected brown colors the way that I did and only used three primary colors, which are purple, white and black. Her menu design was simplistic like mine, but also catered to a very different side of the brewery.

Overall, Sophie’s design was very easy to read and had clear and consistent hierarchy. The mature design catered to the mature audience that is appropriate for most brewery’s. Her attention to detail made the design very aesthetically pleasing and smooth texture both in the imagery and the menu’s paper made navigating the menu a very pleasant experience.

Lloyd Proctor Menu Design

My menu design is kind of basic to begin with. All I did is made a booklet where the front page is the cover for Paradise Creek Brewery. The cover page is the title in the very top then the location underneath, then it’s a picture of cups of beer. The image just covers a small portion of the page. I didn’t want to make it full image, I tried to make it full, but it didn’t come out good or at least couldn’t find good resolution picture to do so. Then it goes to the store hours. The following pages are the menu items. The menu items are small in scale, so you could see all the items much faster. I tried to make the dotted lines to the price as small as possible without breaking any rules I had for myself. The menu items take up the second, third and the back page of the booklet. I made the hierarchy as clear as possible. I didn’t want a huge mess in the pages. There is like only two type fonts used. The main titles are scripts while the rest are normal type faces. I think the fonts go well with each other. The script font is not to difficult to read plus it will help you lead you into the normal type faces.

Based on how the restaurant is I believe it connect to it very well. Its quite simple of a menu that you will easily and quickly be able to pick something to order. The images used emphasizes that this restaurant is a brewery and that they also have drinks to order. The overall color of my menu is white, so it won’t be hard for the customer to see the items of the menu. The items are colored in red, so you could see what are the items. My menu looks more traditional where there are not many things happening at once. I think the printed version could have used a different type of paper like more laminated. The size of the paper seems reasonable because it very close to the typical size of a book. The strength of mine will probably be the simplicity of the overall design.

This is my menu design. pg. 1, 4

My Menu Design pg. 2-3

Mine compared to Camille’s menu design is completely different. Her approach to her design is more of a trifold menu which really works. Each page is simple and doesn’t have to much going on making it very easy to read. The fonts she used are quite simple and very readable. The overall design looks professional. The size of the menu is small so its very easy to hold in your hands. Then each page has their own selection making it easy to distinguish the items much faster. There is no other color than the basic black and white but for her menu design it works very well. It will defiantly go well with this restaurant especially when people want to order their food quickly. The strengths for her menu are that is simple, small, trifold which make it feel fancier. Some things she may came up with is different color variations. But overall it came out great for a menu design especially when I never considered trifold as an option.

Camille’s Menu Design

Camille’s Menu Design

For my final blog entry, I will be comparing my Menu with the one that Whitney Demarest created. I think that our two menus had clear hierarchy and where easy to read. When your eye scans my menu, every section is labeled clearly with a large san serif font that has paragraph space after it. The size and spacing of the different sections makes the different dishes easy to identify. I also used a serif font for the descriptions of the dishes to create contrast and make them easier to read. The prices are separated by a line and bolded so the restaurant’s guest can identify it easily. On Whitney’s menu, she has each section on a different page of the menu. She uses a bold font at the bottom of each page almost like a tab in a binder. Then when you open the menu the hierarchy is established with the use of font size and capital verses lowercase letters. The little food sketches at the top draw your eyes from the bottom label to where the food lists begin.

If anything, the fonts that we both used could be interpreted as maybe too modern for this establishment. I tried to focus on more simplistic fonts since there is already so much stimulation going on when you are in the restaurant. I wanted to include a simple san serif font for the main sections and use a serif font for descriptions to create contrast. Whitney used a more old-fashioned font for the cover and then used san serif for everything else making it look clean and easy to read. I think that the styles we used are appropriate but could have a stronger connection to the theme of the establishment.

For my design, I wanted to keep things straight forward and easy to look at for the wide variety of customers that eat at Paradise Creek. My style is clean and simple. I liked having contrast form the building a little bit while still incorporating their theme and the fact that they make their own beer. I added a hops image above the name of the restaurant and have a hops water mark on the back of the menu. I thought that the menu items themselves had a lot of personality and I wanted them to be the focus of the menu. I liked using lines to separate the princes and sections, helping guide the reader while not being too harsh. Whitney really did an amazing job with her design. The font logo looks worn and the clasp holding things together looks industrial and authentic. The little sketches of food at the top of each page really tie in the decorations in the building and the proses of making beer drawn on the walls.

A color that we both used was brown for ascents and then everything else was black. I chose a glossy finish for my menu because I wanted it to look professional and be on thick card stock. Whitney had a textured front brown cover and the rest was all white. I like the way she organized the whole thing making it small and having different layers to it. Mine is much larger allowing me to have more spacing and make the fonts bigger.

Overall, I think that both of our menus could work for the type of restaurant that Paradise Creek is. I think that adjustments that could be made for mine is making the theme of the menu more connected to the theme of the restaurant. An improvement for Whitney could be making the fonts larger for the older customers that eat at the restaurant during the day.

I chose to focus on a Vietnamese restaurant’s menu in Waterloo, Australia. The restaurant is elegant and has a calm environment, pictures gave a pleasant presence. This menu does well embodying the theme of the whole restaurant. The menu’s front has a mild pink color that makes it more feminine and formal. The images they chose remind me of Asia as well. Then looking at the inside of the menu it is very uniform. The grid is clear and the menu items are perfectly aligned creating unity. Each item under a different section has the same scale and the section titles are a little bigger, which helps emphasize the name of the section. The bigger font of the section title will grab the audience’s attention. The different lists are also divided by a line and have a larger proximity between the sections distinguishing different categories. The menu items are in a san-serif, round font, which makes it easier for the audience to read since they are in a different language.

Paradise Creek’s menu design is a lot more chaotic than the menu design I talked about in the above paragraph. The Paradise Creek menu is successful in capturing the audience’s attention on some of the items listed such as the, pub pretzel, pasta primavera, and classic half-pounder. These menu items have a greater contrast compared to the other items. However, the numerous variety of fonts, weights, and alignment styles cause confusion to the audience. The audience doesn’t know where to look first and instead of thinking about the food they have to interpret the menu first.