DMA234: Hai Menu Project

The Project:

A new far-east fusion restaurant plans to open a new location in the Entertainment district and requires a new menu design. You have been tasked with creative for this project

- Using the soya sauce painting asset as source you will provide a prototype concept of the menu layout using the clients art direction. You must highlight the use of real hand-made art assets as the raw starting point of the digital assets you must create for this engagement.

- Menu items and other information will be provided via client copydeck.

- final image display will be a series of jpg formated images of all menu pages.

Details will only be provided during class all hands meetings

- A complete PDF will also be required

Process and development must be posted via student production blog it must show the lifecycle of the design process ruff sketch, blocking, assets. Grade will be based on milestones and will follow the same general process elements.

The Soy Sauce Menu:

This is the soy sauce background that I created last semester. We are using this painting and using elements to create a restaurant menu. It is supposed to be a cherry blossom tree with some stylized splashes and blossoms through-out.

The Mind Map:

The Mind Map helped me determine what kind of restaurant this would be and what traits the brand would carry. Those same traits would then be shown in the menu so that the customers know exactly what the restaurant is about just by looking at the menu.

Layout Sketches:

These are some of the many layout sketches that were drawn. The final menu was closest to this design, using a booklet concept. I thought using a simple 'open-up' booklet would work well as a restaurant menu. It's simple and all of the items are in sight at once. It works better than a brochure type so that the customer does not have to flip back and forth between the menu.


Time Sheet:

This is the time sheet used to log the work hours for this project.

The Cover:

This is the cover of the menu, which has the logo and the soy sauce painting elements all in it. I wanted to create something abstract and eye-catching. I took pieces of the cherry blossom tree and overlapped them on top of each other to create a rather interesting effect.

Menu Page 1:

This is the first page of the 2 page spread menu. I used a colour change effect on the background to create coloured splashes using the soy sauce painting. I wanted the menu to be very uniform, very simple and easy to read. There are no pictures on the menu to create a sort of sophistication with the restaurant (like many other top restaurants). All of the menu items are shown in black so that is easier to read. The logo is shown at the bottom right and the legal is shown at the bottom as well.

Menu Page 2:

The second page of the menu follows the same layout. The background colours are changed to differentiate between this and the other page. Aside from the colours and the menu items, the page remains relatively the same.

Colour Swatches:

These are the colours and font used for this project.

PDF LINK: http://kevinduong.ca/dma/KevinDuongHaiMenu.pdf