Menu Design
2020
Case Study 01 — Tilt Coffee BarTo practice menu design, I took a menu from a local cafe to practice with and redesign.
The cafe’s branding revolves around minimalism. The design focuses on being clean and simple, utilizing a sans serif typeface with rounded terminals and a lot of breathable white space.
Because the cafe resides in the historic bank district of Los Angeles, I was initially inspired by vintage bank ledgers / receipts. I tried this with a rounded sans serif to align with the original branding, and then branched out to a typeface more remniscient of Art Deco / the 1920’s. I also tried a version mixing a serif typeface with a bold, wide sans serif. I liked the look, but not for this particular cafe.
I tried a few more designs that focused on the minimalist aesthetic of the cafe. I liked the general layout from the previous attempts, which condensed the information in easy-to-read boxes. I also did my best to get rid of extraneous information under section headers, relegating information like “hot only” or “7-11 AM” to sit directly next to the item on the menu in a different typeface.
Thinking about what I could specifically bring to this project, I added small playful touches to the design. My design aesthetic is informed more by essentialism than minimalism, and so I tried to honor the aesthetic of the cafe while still having small elements like a squiggly or a pop of color to brighten the design.
My last exploration was to go really big with the text. When using sans serif typefaces, I really like when they are presented really small or really big in a design. Personally, I find that this looks a lot more playful and interesting! I thought going big would be great for a cafe in a busy business area, particularly if the customers are in a hurry and need to find relevant information quickly. Below is my process:
I like the typographic menus above, but I also included in a version with shapes and colors in case the cafe wanted to go in that direction! I like these versions too.
2020
Case Study 02 — Tickle Tree CafeThis cafe is a local, cozy, and suburban spot.
The logo is hand-drawn and remniscient of a children’s book illustration (aptly so, as the cafe is named after a children’s book). The general menu design, however, is more simple and straightforward.
My first few explorations revolved around creating an area highlighting featured dishes, and cleaner sections overall. According to menu psychology, the eye tends to look at the top right of the page first, making it valuable real estate. I tried my first design around this design, but ran into two problems.
The first issue was that there were a lot of items on the food menu, and it had to fit on one page. The items were also in non-negotiable sections like “breakfast” or “sandwiches”, meaning I had to be careful with placement. The second issue was that as a popular brunch spot, the cafe has popular dishes that all sit within the breakfast category. This meant that placing a featured box on the upper right hand corner would be awkward if all the breakfast items were on the left side of the page. And the breakfast items had to sit on the left side because the menu read chronologically from left to right — breakfast, lunch, dinner.
I decided to make the featured items pop by creating a colored box around it, meaning it would draw attention no matter where it sat on the page. It also created a natural divider between light breakfast dishes like yogurt and oatmeal, and heavy-hitters like omelettes and huevos rancheros.
I also reorganized the columns. Putting burgers and sandwiches on top of each other allowed for the last column to house the logo, salads, and dinner options.
I played with color and shapes to find effective ways to draw the eye to each section without being overwhelmed by information. I thought the curved text along the top and bottom would keep the playful spirit of the afe, and the highlighted boxes being slightly off the text would give a sense of breathability.
Below is the final food and drink menu!
2020
Coffee and PlantsCoffee and Plants is a cute and trendy cafe in Pasadena that serves Instagram-worthy coffee drinks and plants/plant-related merchandise. I worked with the team to give their menu a design overhaul.
Below is their original menu.
They asked for something a little more classier and elegant, potentially with greenery to convey Californian vibes and the interior of their space (which has many green plants). The finished product of this concept hasn’t been posted on their end yet, so I won’t be posting it here either. Instead, I wanted to show the second concept I worked on (that they ended up not going with).
Looking at their Instagram and pictures of their physical store, I noticed that the branding was very feminine, flirty, and cool. There is a wall of flowers and a neon sign, and while their original menu features a bold sans serif logo, their coffee cups actually have their name written in calligraphy. I would dub this look the “Tumblr/Instagram Girl Aesthetic”, and I pondered on how to bring this to life in a menu while keeping it sophisticated and classy.
I ended up looking at old afternoon tea menus from the library:
I first reorganized the drinks into different categories, and also reorganized the categories on the page so that the more special drinks were up top and highlighted. I also discovered about halfway through designing this menu that there were food items and additional drinks that needed to be added as well, which led to more shuffling around and re-writing categories.
After my initial draft, I decided to add a gold vintage border remniscient of border in the yellow menu above. I also went with a serif typeface for the drink titles to lend a more classic and sophisticated look, although I chose one that is more rounded and wide for a feminine and modern touch.
The last menu (bottom right) is the finished design for this style. Although it wasn’t selected for this particular cafe, I loved how the design turned out and hope to use it for a future project!