Menu design
Whether it’s designing a menu for an existing food concept, a seasonal campaign, or a new brand, we love to create memorable menu experiences that encourage engagement and social interaction. We inject your personality, we optimise navigation and we maximise revenue generating opportunities.
Why is menu design important?
Reflect your brand identity.
The most basic function of a menu is to be read, to inform customers of flavours, ingredients and most importantly- price. Legibility is essential, but many online template sites fall into the trap of design over functionality to the detriment of their customers.
But beyond this, menus offer an excellent opportunity for a restaurant or café to showcase their branding, with mood-setting photographs or ambience-creating typography. A skilled designer can identify your brand’s unique qualities to produce an easy-to-read, distinctive, creative design.
Branding your business is a professional necessity; the first thing that customers will engage with is the menu, whether online or in print format. Every element of the design should be tailored to you and your brand; the business’ theme should be reflected in everything from font to photos.
Differences in Design
Whether for a restaurant, café, or bar, good menu design is essential.
Cafes, bars, and restaurants all share similarities, in that their menus should be tailored towards their desired customer. Particulars like what time of day an eatery is most visited, or whether a pub is family friendly should all be considered when designing a menu.
This difference in clientele should be reflected in design choices; where cafés may choose lighter colours with soft script, a more dimly lit bar may have to rely on large images, bold font and brighter colours.
Material quality matters too; an upscale restaurant may favour thicker cardstock to convey quality. The menu should match the venue as closely as possible.
Good restaurant menu design choices can communicate your passion for your brand and the quality of your dishes, which will be responded to with bigger and more frequent purchases.
What Should a Menu Say About a Brand?
Restaurant Menus are the window to the kitchen.
A menu should tell a customer three important things: what food or drinks you sell, what that includes and what the price is. But where the user experience is dramatically improved is with design.
Branding that accurately represents the persona of your restaurant should be your main ambition. Menu designers can take influence from previous artistic choices, such as print adverts or social media posts: anything and everything that says something about your brand’s values. By promoting your brand’s story, ideals, and identity in every aspect of your business, you will create not just a restaurant, café, or bar, but an experience.
In looking online for design tips, it is easy to be convinced by a free menu template to use every function that they offer. While this choice may appear to be a good thing, overloading your design makes it look cheap and, most importantly, difficult to read. Instead of the eye being drawn towards carefully selected aspects of the design, the result is an over-stimulating, confusing disarray.
The Advantages of Professional Design
We take menu design seriously.
Professional design services offer a holistic approach to menu design; restaurant menu design should reflect the mood and ambience of a business. A expert design agency can achieve this by utilising design elements from other aspects of the business. A sign, a social post or even bar décor can offer inspiration for restaurant menu design.
Quality is a hallmark of our design process. We place emphasis on conveying the true spirit of your restaurant, providing a service which is highly personalised and reflective of your brand values.
While the lure of free template menus can bring in large amounts of clients, the reality is disorganised, impersonal, and illegible. Restaurant menus that use free online templates for their design fail to stand out, hold attention and lack the most important function- readability.
Whether your desired creative style is fresh and colourful, sleek and modern, or traditional and upscale, at Eat With Your Eyes, we inject your brand’s personality into every project.
