Practice

Restaurant Menu Redesign

To start practicing your typography and composition chops, we’re going to take a break from designing for the screen and turn our attention to print.

Note: You’ll have time to get started on this assignment during workshop.

Assignment

Redesign a restaurant menu.

Find a PDF of a restaurant menu online. (Try searching on Yelp)
Use the contents of the menu to create a new design.
In this Google Drive folder, create a new folder with your name where you will upload the original menu and your redesign

Design just the inside of the menu. Not the cover. If it’s a long menu, just design 2 pages of it (1 spread).
We are printing these menus in black and white on A4 paper. (Shades of grey are okay.)
We do not have a budget to license fonts, so please choose an open-source font from Google Fonts.
Limit yourself to 1–2 fonts.
Limit yourself to text—no icons, no illustrations, no photos, no color.

Install SkyFonts to sync fonts from Google Fonts to your computer.
If you have limited experience with print design, seek out guidance from your peers who have more experience. Remember, we are all developing our eye, and using your eye to help others is just as much an opportunity to practice as working on your own.

If you need an extra challenge, find a bilingual menu (in two languages you are familiar with) to redesign.

There are so so so many fonts to comb through on Google Fonts, so in an effort to make your life easier, here are some to get you started.

These are screen-friendly sans-serifs which hold up well at small sizes and on screens with low resolutions.

This is a good list of very readable serif fonts to get you started. You never know when a good italic could come in handy!