Food photography can make a menu look like a directory for mass-produced goods, but if your food is beautiful, you might want to show your customers. Ragu in Russia got their photography spot on, crisp and colourful, but with moody lighting and dark backgrounds creating terrific depth and contrast. Classy.
It would be hard branding a Japanese restaurant named in Spanish as ‘bull’, residing in a Spanish-speaking nation. This Tokyo neon works a treat at taking the theme away from the expected steakhouse, and firmly back into sushi and sake bar. Clever work.
Illustration is huge at the moment. It’s a home-cooked way of branding that will always be totally unique. Not only that, it’s a piece of art in itself, creating an extra reason for people to photograph your menu and deliver your branding message all over social media. Note how monochrome art can lead into using a more simple print stock? You might pay for the illustrator and the bindings, but menus can be run off the desktop forever more.
Here’s a lesson in knowing your audience. Gaslight give us an inkling of what they expect of their customers in this menu. Informed, decadent, yet casual. And sneakily labelling the cheapest wine as exactly that will push most drinkers to at least the next level up, all for the sake of pride.
Notice the blocking too – this makes categories easy to find, helping your diners to spend less time on the menu, and more time talking with friends.
More use of illustrations here, but Sketch’s imagery suggests icons with personality. If you’re a sunhat kind of lady – you might head towards the porridge. If you don’t want to look like a lady in a sunhat, then probably best to head for the eggs benedict.
Blocking is used again, and partnering with some clever font mixing, this makes for a slightly whimsical menu – definitely suitable for a mad hatter…
Las Iguanas have a menu that is fairly current in appearance – natural tones, vintage fonts blocking into sections. Also some use of icons, helpful for a pre-theatre or business lunch crowd. What we love about this is the copy. Not too wordy, just enough to start you drooling all over your paper menu. They’ve made a fairly brief menu sound so much fuller by making you want to eat every single item on offer.
