Eco friendly menus

Giraffe and Serena
I love the feel of these menus. They're so bright and cheerful.
The format is also very nice, and works well with the name, giraffe. This has made me think that perhaps I could do something along the same lines, and play on roast.









I don't want to lose face about the whole eco friendly approach, so I'm looking at menus that have taken this into account.

Letterpress
This is simply a lovely menu. It's been made for a wedding (so a little different to a coffee shop!) so I'm not sure whether this technique would be ideal, but it's certainly worth keeping in mind.








These seem nice.
They're bound together with what looks like ribbon which is a nice idea.
The format is also small and slick. I've been thinking about how big it would be, and I initially thought it would work best on a smaller scale.

Stanley Kubrick postcards

I'm really pleased with how these have turned out. I had them printed on a satin stock to give them a glossy kind of look, just like most existing postcards.

These are the first lot of photographs I've taken, and I don't think they're going to be the last. I'm happy with some of them, though The Shining postcard could be photographed a lot better. Because the colour I used in the postcard is so light, it's hard to distinguish the colour difference between the artwork and the background; white. It's not a problem.. I'll just have to revisit them at some point.

Stanley Kubrick posters

I finally printed off the Stanley Kubrick posters, and I've taken some lovely snaps of them too..

As you can see, they only show parts of the posters, but I plan to take photographs of each of the whole thing at some point.

Roast postcards

I've been busy photographing the postcards I made for roast.

I'm pretty happy with how they've printed. They look pretty slick.

I've had a few troubles trying to get decent photographs of them though. I want to get some really good shots, but it's hard controlling the depth of field. Initially I wanted to get the front area in focus whilst the background was blurred, but most of the photos went from a little out of focus at the front, to in focus, and then back out of focus. Gah! I do quite like the few end ones though (eco friendly tree).

Bag

I want to make a bag that will be used to carry anything bought at the coffee shop, roast.

I'm going to go for a gift bag-look, though it'll be made out of the same stock as the sandwich and coffee packaging.

As you can see here, these are my initial tries. For the time being, I've had to make the net up myself because I can't find a decent one anywhere.

Inspiring

Strange I know, but I ordered some example wedding invites, just to have a lot at some of the folds used. I thought it might be a good idea for when it came round to designing the menu for roast.

I received some really interesting examples. A really good mixture too. I done fairly well when ordering these, hah.

I particularly like the more simpler folds; long ways, three folds and one fold, though like I mentioned in a previous post, I don't think it will be enough space to fit much information. I still haven't gathered the content (I guess I should do that pretty soon- so I know how big/small this needs to be). It might make it a bit easier!

Coffee patterns

I've come across some pretty interesting shapes whilst looking at various coffee beverages. I like the thought of coffee being represented by a certain look.

I also find what looks like some sort of wrapping paper (possibly used for packaging?) with the coffee artwork covering it. Hmm.. my creative senses are tingling..

I found this very unique; postcard menus. It's a nice idea, but the amount of information that could be displayed would be restricted, so I don't think this would work for me. Nice idea though.

I really like the illustrations used here. They're very simple and clear. This is a possible pathway for me when designing the menu for roast.

The type here is horrible. I certainly wont be using a funky typeface on the roast menu. I find this menu very child-like.

I've included this mainly to just provide me with some ideas as to what beverages to use...

Whilst it's up here though, I may as well comment on it.

I'm no longer a fan of whacking a logo in the centre of the background, with an opacity of 25-50%. It looks very tacky, and with this especially.. just generally doesn't look right. I will use the logo more effectively when designing the menu for roast.

I've seen a fair few menus that include photography to illustrate the various coffees available. Though I think this is a nice idea, I think it's over-used, so I'm going to try to come up with something different but still successfully represents the products.

Sugar

These are just quick mock ups of the sugar designs for roast.

I really like the long thin variety. They look a lot more like sugar packaging, though some coffee shops/cafes have the more square look (last image).

Sugar artworks

First lot of sugar art work play abouts. You can't see on most of them, but they will be folded in half.

Flowers

Just been having a nosey to see if I could find any tutorials or examples of flowers made out of tissue/napkins. I'm thinking of making a bouquet out of roast coffee shop tissues.

Advertisements

I thought this was a really interesting idea, and it kind of relates to what I'm aiming to achieve with the advertisements for Roast.

It's incredibly simple. The message is clear and easy. A very fun piece of advertising.

The idea of using a number of objects to create something else is also an idea that could be pushed.

This is fascinating in terms of where the eye is attracted to, and how it moves over the advertisement.

Re-usable?

I really like the idea of using objects within the poster advertisements. Using something to create something else is part of the whole 'eco friendly' concept behind Roast.

An example of what I'm yapping about is this..

I want to make up some tissues displaying the shop's logo, just like costa coffee and other shops do. I could, for example, create a bunch of flowers out of them. A clever tag line would follow a photograph of these on the poster advertisements.

I could apply this concepts to other ideas such as: coffee cups, sugar wrappers, plates etc.

'Made with love'.

Tickets

Most tickets have two parts to them so half of it can be ripped off to show it's been accepted. I thought maybe this could be an idea regarding what the tickets I design look like.

Here, the ticket would be perforated through the middle.

Tickets

Cinema tickets

Slight change

After getting a bit of feedback on these, I decided to change a few of them a little, to make them work better as a set.

2001: A Space Odyssey look a little alone because of the gradient I made. Though it looked quite like the real HAL, it didn't fit well with the rest. I've used multiple circles instead, and have used 10pts less each time to give it a tonal look (god I can't explain things well!... but you know what I mean?) I think it works a lot better now, because they're solid colours, rather than gradually fading out, like it was before.

The Shining was another one I decided to tweak. Before, the two odd looking shapes either side of the beige and the bottom where the type is was beige which left the middle black. Unlike the others, there was hardly any black, so again, it's back to the whole uniform business. It didn't look like it belonged to the set. Now though, I think it works a lot better, and I'm a lot more confident with it!

Final postcards

I believe the next stage is to get these printed, to see how they look like that. I have a feeling these are going to look a lot better on-screen than they do printed. We'll have to wait and see.

Postcards

Just been playing with the artwork from the posters again, to fit the format of the postcards.

I'm still deciding whether portrait or landscape works best. It may be that a few are landscape, and the others are portrait.