Swedish Burger power!

Source: http://yigitarslan.deviantart.com/art/Cafe-Mia-Menu-Design-187974989
Title: Cafe Mia Menu Design
Artist: yigitarslan

Light browns and grays are a good start. Close ups of food images in wavy pictures like ocean tides. The font here is a change of pace from all other menus critiqued so far. Very art deco and the kerning is tight. The dark brown in the dish names doesn't contrast and works with the light brown backdrop.

Even in a different language, it reads well. The legibility for a general audience with calm colors so not to overly stimulate one's eyes. And the fact this was found on deviant art, a place with a dubious reputation, shows there is still talent testing the limits of their skill.

Black & White is something you don't see everyday.

Source: http://www.effectivedesignworld.com/2014/08/hotel-menu-design.html
Title: Tri-fold Brochure 2

You don't normally see a menu quite like this except for old dives and places that cater to older crowds over 50. First, there is no pictures. Nothing to distract the elderly but younger audiences may hate having to imagine what their meal may look like. Also black and white is not an ideal color combination when you want to sell something in the food industry. It's very basic and slightly depressing like being at a funeral parlor with a coffin on the table.

Now the typeface has thriving potential here. An art deco serif style for the title and the rest being serif style black with simple distinction between meal name and description with boldness and lead mono spacing. The thin black lines under each description are meant to further separate but seems unnecessary due to the spacing.  I like because it's retro and doesn't hurt the eyes when reading.

More Photoshop hand model madness.

Source: http://www.effectivedesignworld.com/2014/08/hotel-menu-design.html
Title: Mexican Restaurant Menu

Here's an example template for a Mexican/lunch theme restaurant. Notice the abundance of green and red in both the background space and foreground photos. Bright primary and secondary tones commonly used to indicate natural organic while being colorful enough to attract attention.  The close of the soft shell chime chungas smothered in peppers and spices is a good start to get mouths watering.

Inside, the background is plain white with capital sans serif typeface of red for dish entries and black for descriptions of ingredients. Leading of the lines is reasonable with tracking is not overly stretched. Prices are spaced to match their designated dishes but could use some connection like a dotted line. The bottom of the page appears torn to show the cover page from above. Probably a space saving trick to prevent from splitting the dinner specials across two pages.

I like the steps this unknown artist took because it doesn't try to be in your face with large pictures or flashy colors.

The amazing spider...wait, its not about him?

Source: http://www.effectivedesignworld.com/2014/08/hotel-menu-design.html
Title: The Amazing Restaurant Menu 2

Strange title to claim. What does make this an amazing restaurant menu? Is it the color? The style? The identical hand model in both pages?

Well the text had some thought put into it with a downward descent from left to right. Dish names being bold with icons next to them for easy to identification. Yet the descriptions have a different color that makes them blend too well with the background colors and the small size isn't helping much. Add to those woes is the lack of connection between dish names and their price tags. Hard to tell what home made hot dogs cost with the $6 free floating in space like that. Even after zooming I still have trouble reading the descriptions of the meals on both pages.

Color palette has some range to it with soft tones and shapes resting the background to help contrast with the dish name to hard solid fusion tones that act as borders. Photos thankfully are limited to three per page but their size and shape vary too much.

All in all it's not totally bad like the dreaded Balls of Asia...shudders....but there is a few necessary tweaks to be worked on.

Good bistro is so hard to find.

Source: http://www.effectivedesignworld.com/2014/08/hotel-menu-design.html
title: Bistro Menu Design

If any one is looking for an effective, organic loving, well spaced clean design for their future bizz in the restaurant fast game then this selection from effective design world.com is a good template. The overall color choices are soft primaries and secondary teals over a white backdrop with a blue border hugging the top only. Photos are limited to two  with one large to cover the top and the second nested to the mid right to provide additional eye candy.

Typeface is actually balanced. All lines and lettering is mono spaced so well I think someone took the time to use a ruler to measure every space taken. Every category has a good proximity with dotted lines connecting price with meal. Leading is good with bold font style to separate names from descriptions.

It's good. No. It's better then most menus I've come across. Designed by someone with professional eye for detail. The menu doesn't clog nor does it have an abuse of excessive colors. An example to try and emulate for those interested in Graphic Design.

Coffee menus for Men?

Source: http://www.effectivedesignworld.com/2014/08/hotel-menu-design.html
Title: Coffee Menu

Target audiences are very important when considering a design. Some designs are obvious while others are...abstract. So here its seems strangely targeted to males of age 20-32. How did I arrive to this conclusion? The strange presence of grey and black, which are considered in some marketing circles masculine, as well as straight polygons. Minimal pictures and all of them focus on different styles of coffee. And there's the text. Straight to the point sans serif typeface with spacey leading between lines and long tracking.

There is no cartoon characters, no bright colors except for the yellows used in the price spheres next to the images. There is no flowers or warm hues. It's obviously not for most but the die hard male coffee drinkers.

Christmas lights is not a good pattern for Chili's.

Source: http://www.tapja.com/10-examples-restaurant-menu-design-business-restaurant/examples-of-fast-food-menu-design/
Title: Chili's Menu

Being a national recognized brand, Chili's menu needs to be good design wise. So why does it have some poor choices? For example, the leading of the text is fairly close due to the size of the printing but the tracking is spaced enough to cover the majority of the columns. Tightly packed under a single large circular picture that is enlarged to show a delicious meal available. And the color for the small typeface is a light cream white which normally be easy to see thanks to contrast. I suppose the white is a tad too light. Then again the background colors of altering Christmas lights isn't' helping.

Yet there is somethings that do work. The category titles on titled banners are a nice touch that separates and highlights. Easy to read and naturally brings attention thanks to the rebelling of alignment.  The pictures also work because of the careful focus on the food.

Why so many dishes?

Source: http://www.tapja.com/10-examples-restaurant-menu-design-business-restaurant/korean-restaurant-design-menu/
Title: Korean Restaurant Menu Design

Okay before I go into detail here I just want to point out that the abundance of Asian menus on this blog is due to the abundance of examples I get whenever I go looking on the internet. Seriously, type "menu design" and about one third of them are from a Japanese sushi bar or a Chinese take out restaurant. I would put more non Asian menus if I could find ones that didn't suck too much or didn't suck enough or is an actual decent piece of work.

This  menu falls more under the suck enough category for two reasons: Large abundance of  pictures and really tiny cramped text blocks. One needs to understand that space is important and how much is used or rather not used can make all the difference in people liking your art. The pictures are just too much. Two to three overly large pictures hugging the edges while a cluster of smaller pics Z line across the pages just screams bad form because the customer will be too focused on looking at the pictures and not reading to find their meals. And this is why small text can be a bad thing when it is so cluster together that it reads as one paragraph of a single meal. With that combination it's no wonder I'm getting a headache looking at it.

Then there's the abundance of Korean words. I understand its a Korean restaurant but unless this menu was made for a city where Korean is the dominant form of language, it will alienate the menu from the customers. Drop back some or shrink the Korean next to the pictures so more room can be freed to space out the rest of the texts.

A decent way to make a Chinese menu.

Source: http://www.tapja.com/10-examples-restaurant-menu-design-business-restaurant/chinese-food-menu-design-idea/
Title: Nobel Chinese menu

When picking out a design, you need to think of what best reflects the atmosphere you want to convey to the intended audience. You could try to do one of your own but it makes more profitable sense to hire an artist to design it. There is no shortage of websites advertising to help, most are reliable. But enough about websites, this is about the menu itself.

Nobel Chinese restaurant is a stark contrast compared to Balls of Asia. There is more then one color thank goodness. These colors are good contrasts as they are paired together. The pics are good close ups of the available dishes, enough to stir a hunger hopefully.

Now the text is a hit and miss. Each page seems to have its own unique layout according to the number of dishes and space available. Not a bad idea but it does take away from consistency a little. The Chinese letters and English letters is another contrast that gives a good vibe to the menu of oriental flavor. It also causes a conflict of languages since not a lot of Americans can read  Hun Chinese.

It's a good menu. Note there are a couple of mistakes such as the red background for the second page and this being replaced by black from page four on. With a couple of fixes, It may get better.

Balls of asia...I just can't look away...

Source: http://uiconstock.com/65-restaurant-menu-designs-for-designers-inspiration-2014/
Title: Balls of Asia menu

First there's good quality menus. Then there's okay designs. Followed by poor choices in color, typeface, sizing, space usage or all of the above.

Then there's Balls of Asia. ...Dear God in heaven what am I looking at?

Um, the red is big in effect here. Almost too red. So bright that it seems to match the color of certain foods. Next is the format. Everything is in parallel columns with tacky spike typeface to name each dish and a number in the opposite corner. What is the purpose for that? Why didn't the artists use space much more effectively to allow room to add descriptions to the dishes displayed?  Why is it called "Balls of Asia"? Reference to the ball shapes of some of these dishes? Or something else? I hope its not the something else.

This takes the cake for bad menu design. It's the king of crud. It's...Balls of Asia.

Read the sign and stop for some eggs.

Source: http://uiconstock.com/65-restaurant-menu-designs-for-designers-inspiration-2014/
Title: I have 2 eggs and More Menu

Some restaurants have a certain time of day where business peaks and revenues pay off for the employee's hard work. This is called the magic hour and depending on where your business is and what specialties its good at, its the aim goal for every employee to meet. It is the time where dozens of patrons flock into your store waiting to be served quickly and respectfully their meals. In turn for such kindness, big tips and revenue for the business.  Most are focused on the usual breakfast/lunch/dinner time tables while others aim for the rush hour traffic lot.

Then there are chains that stick to certain time to make or break them. That time is breakfast/ early lunch specials for "I have 2 eggs and more".  To get people to want to eat there, their menu has to reflect a happy wanting to raise up and meet the day with positive attitude. Ergo, the color palette has soft oranges and bright yellows and blacks for both attention getting and sunny mood. Next is the typefaces which take a black tone, san serif font to contrast against the orange backdrop(nicely done there) while category titles are highlighted with polygon yellowish-orange to stand out. Pictures hug the top and bottom sections so the text blocks can be read without interference. The pictures are large but not so enormous that they keep the audience from looking down to read the selections.Finally, the yellow street sign with eggs is a nice way to state what they are selling as most adults in american are trained to pay attention to bright yellow street signs for road conditions instinctively.

Trying to make something cool doesn't mean you should loose basics.

Source: http://uiconstock.com/65-restaurant-menu-designs-for-designers-inspiration-2014/
Title: Laelet Alkaif Menu

I have no idea what type of restaurant this is supposed to be. Best guess from the information presented is a new age organic fruit /cafe. Um, the proprietors seem to like big, singular pictures to the left leaving a very small space for wording that seems to blend too much with the mocha background. I want to find the person that design and yell at his face for not using a better contrasting color for his text. "Where is the white?!" I would say.

Sigh. I get the fact the artist was trying to get the cool metro sexual organic loving coffee vibe for his/hers patrons. But that shouldn't be an excuse for poor design. Bad Color palette choices, giant pictures that take up too much space. Too tiny text blocks with coloring that blends too well with the backgrounds. Unbalanced ratio of space usage. Any person would have a hard time reading the words while being eagerly wanting more illustrations of the dishes listed and not photos taken from a photographer's studio.

Just bad design here.