I think that this menu, The Faversham from Leeds, UK is both visually intriguing, and well organized. The hierarchy is not only represented in the main menu, but also in the call out pages. The first red call out page uses color to grab your attention, and lists the specials from the menu that the restaurant wants you to pay special attention to. The main menu is split into two columns. The separation of columns, and space used keeps the reader intrigued, and looking at the page for longer. The two columns is a better strategy than listing everything in one long chunk of text. The different sections on the menu have titles like sides, appetizers, and main dishes because this is the hierarchy that a reader would most commonly look for the items in. The menu utilizes a bold sans serif, and a regular sans serif type which emphasizes the clean and modern feel of the menu. The menu uses an ample amount of white space, which makes it more interested to look at, and more “user friendly”.

The Faversham

The Faversham Menu – Leeds, UK

The Faversham Menu – Leeds, UK

Overall, I think that the menu above is more visually pleasing than the menu from Paradise Creek Brewery. The two menus share a similar hierarchy, listing appetizers, burgers, and entrees, which makes it easy to navigate. The font used for the Paradise Creek menu vary’s for almost every item on the menu, and leaves the reader distracted. The type is also a lot larger than the Faversham menu, which cause you to have to flip back and forth from several pages rather than just being able to look at one page. I dont think there is anything successful about the Paradise Creek menu. It is hard to read, and uses white space in a poor way.

I choose a menu designed by Re for Bare Witness, in Sydney Australia. I picked this menu because I loved the color contrast and the simplicity of the design with the use of negative space. The designer used contrasting weight, spatial intervals, and scale to enforce hierarchy of the menu. Each dish is put into different categories for appetizers, drinks and major menu entrees. This menu design keeps things simple with all lowercase and the same font. Scale and weight single out the different categories and spatial alignment connects prices to dishes. The universal theme of the menu is said to be clean and simple connecting the name “Bare” and the reflecting the clean ingredients the restaurant uses.

Personally, I prefer the Bare Witness menu to the Paradise Creek one. I think that this menu has too many different fonts, making it hard to identify what is what. For example, the Appetizers label is about the same size as all the appetizer options. The contrasting weight of the Pub Pretzel is confusing. My eyes go straight to that part of the menu. One thing that I liked about this menu is that the descriptions of each item is smaller than the item title. The contrasting size and fonts make it easy to know what description goes with each item.  Another thing I like is the sides section. I think it does a good job of breaking up the page and making new sections of the menu.

When reading through Chapter 4 of Timothy Samara “Design Elements A Graphic Style Manual” a couple of principles really caught my attention: the range of literal to abstract in images and how that plays into the scale of reality/believability to the symbolic; how words with pictorial qualities transform into super signs that evoke visual, emotional and intellectual qualities that make them memorable; and how metaphor can be used for mental brainwashing because viewers given a series of images or text and an image will automatically create a narrative to connect those things.

Looking through the Book Cover Archive by Ben Pieratt and Eric Jacobsen, I found three book covers that relate to the project I would like to design and also demonstrate the principles taught in the selected reading.
“The Crow’s Vow” uses a literal image of a crow that is highly realistic in a way that makes it into an abstract symbol.  By placing the image of the crow in a line of text it makes a complex statement without complicating the design.  It forces the viewer to fill in the missing word with the picture in a way that I believe captures the ‘super sign’ quality and makes it a highly memorable cover design.

“The Crow’s Vow” by Susan Briscoe, Designed by David Drummond

“Pale Fire” by Vladimir Nabokov, Designed by Stephen Doyle.

“King Arthur in the East Riding” by Simon Armitage, Designed by Samantha Johnson.

The cover of “Pale Fire” is a metaphor that creates a mental narrative for me.  The title and the spent match invite me to create a story out of those two things.  It is thought provoking in that it is not clear what is actually meant by ‘pale’ fire, but when paired with the spent match it makes you think that smoke could be ‘pale fire’ or perhaps the fire that used to be on the match had some special quality before it was blown out.

The third cover I picked out was the closest to a traditional fantasy style cover that I could find.  “King Arthur in the East Riding” has a photo cover which, despite the anachronism, makes it quickly recognizable and gives me the illusion that I know what the story will be about.
I primarily read fantasy and the majority of cover designs are highly realistic paintings or photographs.  While I enjoy this type of artwork, I also enjoy the simple abstraction that is present on many general fiction or poetry covers such as “The Crow’s Vow”.  When considering what I would like to design for my own book, which walks the genre line between women’s fiction and YA fantasy, I would like to capture this uncertainty in genre in a simple but evocative cover design that would appeal to readers of both genres.  I think I would like to experiment with digital collage and metaphors when creating my design.

archives-currency-inspiration

I was very interested in the currency section of the Library’s Manuscripts and Archives collections. I enjoyed the font and visual art that went into a lot of it. It got me thinking about themes and the way you can promote certain things through typography.

A significant issue I hold close to me is coral reefs. As someone who grew up on a tropical island, the ocean is apart of my home, along with the life within it. I thought about ways I could of about this project, thinking about how I can contribute to an issue that really means something to me. I looked through Coral Reef Promotional Posters and noticed that although the images served its purpose, there wasn’t anything that really drew my attention to it. Aside from the colors itself, I didn’t find much appealing.

With this being said, I decided I wanted to base my font creation off of coral reefs. I want to somehow study their anatomy and find a way to form letters from it. I am hoping to utilize it in my very own promotional poster of saving coral reefs. I figured using the coral as the font itself could be analytical in helping show just how important they are.

To execute the assignment, I would start by taking photos of coral and masking them out in Photoshop. I then plan to bring the masked images into Illustrator and use the pen tool to somehow find a way to create letters out of them. I haven’t decided yet if I wanted to do the alphabet in uppercase or lowercase. I’m concerned with how cohesive they all would be based on the way I design them. So, this is something that I will be thinking about as I continuing editing my photos on photoshop.

For this project I was inspired by creating something more natural and since my soccer season is about to start up again I thought it would be a good idea to use grass as a texture and potentially a block style font since a soccer field is rectangular. Ive seen tons of fonts just like it where it involves grass or dirt so I think this would definitely be doable. The text source I was inspired by is the “Eat Pray Love” book that has font on the front created through organic material. The subject of the book is a romance novel of a women traveling around to just escape the place she used to be in. It sets a very adventurous yet romantic mood which is very interesting. I want the readers to really get a sense of being outside and adventurous along with a romantic feel. I will use a materials based design in order to create the organic shapes but I will also manipulate the shapes in Illustrator. I think using materials for this theme would be the only way to truly capture my idea. I will use my best friends camera in order to capture my images of the grass and then save those on my computer. Once the images are saved then I will mess with them on photoshop to get the right contrast that I think will be a good fit for my font. Then I will use Illustrator to apply the grass texture to my font.