Week 1 - Menu Design

First week of Challenge 52 (see this post for an explanation of the challenge) and I thought I'd write about one of my recent graphic design jobs, I just got delivery of the printed up design so perfect timing!

The brief for this job was to design a drinks menu for a bar that could sit out on their tables. The bar already has quite a strong corporate identity (see their website) so I had to make sure the menu would fit with their other promotional material and signage.

The manager's initial idea was to just have a simple folded leaflet style menu as the budget wasn't there for the printing costs for a booklet. However when they told me the budget they did have I thought there might be some room to get a bit creative and hopefully get them something a bit more functional than a basic leaflet. I thought by basing the design around one A3 sheet I could maybe make them a booklet style menu while keeping the costs to a minimum.


The drinks could be split into five categories so with the front page making six I had the idea to make a booklet with coloured, staggered pages so customers could quickly find what they wanted. So much measuring and cutting up of paper later I worked out a design I thought would work quite well to clearly show all the information required. The staggered page design also meant I could make the best use of space i.e. larger categories could be near the back so they had more page space and the smaller ones at the front.

The fact the pages are colour coded and all different sizes means the A3 flat sheet looks a bit confused but when it's trimmed, folded and assembled it all fits together. The front and back of the sheet is shown below:

The good thing is too that the different colours mean it's clear where to fold the pages so assembly is quick. The mock up of the final booklet showing the page layouts is below:

Finally, some pictures of the actual menus, before and after assembly. I'm happy with the way they turned out and they worked out way cheaper than a normal 12 page booklet would have been, in fact they were only marginally more expensive than the original idea for an A4 folded version would have been. They were printed on 200gsm stock and matt laminated so they're pretty sturdy and durable.

 

If anyone would like to join in with Challenge 52 just comment below and I'll work out a way to create a blog link-up etc. Nanuk jewellery is taking part and you can see her Week 1 post here.

Packaging experiments

Like I said in a previous post I've been playing around with various types of packaging for my items in an attempt to work out which I want to use. I've mainly been using craft card finish boxes with a small sticker in the form of the bird in my current logo, tied with either twine or ribbon. But I've also sent out a few items with little canvas bags with my logo applied to them (see the photos), in these ones the items are first wrapped in tissue paper. You can see some variations on these in the photos below:























I'm determined to make time to do a proper set of branding materials this month (in time for my first fair in June!) and included in that will be my proper logo and a final decision on what packaging to use. I think I may end up using both bags and boxes as they both have their place. I've also got plans for packaging for my t-shirts/hoodies that I'll hopefully be able to roll out soon.

Currently I'm using up my hangtags I made for my t-shirts and altering them slighty so they work as business cards (which I send out with all orders). I plan to have new hangtags and business cards once I've decided on the design so in the meantime these are the one's I'm using (along with some wee badges I had done too):