Design your way

Monday, July 1, 2013

The menu of a restaurant or a coffee shop is very important to the overall brand image and also to generating sales. It could be crucial in the battle of making the customers happier or losing them. This might put a little bit pressure on you as the designer that’s working on the design of the restaurant’s print materials, but try not to look at it this way.

Instead, consider this a challenge and try to create the best brand package for the restaurant or coffee shop that you are working for. While doing this, try not to let your creativity go wild. It is good to be a creative person, but too much creative process might hurt the menu designs. To achieve the best results, try putting yourself in the customer’s place and design a menu that will satisfy the customer’s needs.

A really simple advice is to make the menu simple, enjoyable, readable and give as much information is necessary to the customer. A lot of clients might ask you to put images on every page. This may be good, but only on menus which have few items on them. On a big menu, it is better to make a simple text list because people will want to decide fast, and not go fast through it and not flip pages for minutes until they find something they like. I had to mention this because I had a client like this and it seemed like a good idea to me too, that is until I actually saw the menu myself and wanted to order something.

Anyhow, the best way to learn how to create a good restaurant or coffee shop menu design is through the power of example. In this article you have a few examples of good menu designs that I hope are the inspiration you were looking for.