Our tips and tricks for making sure you get it right.
Whether you are putting your menus together or working through the look of your website, there are a few golden rules when thinking about their look and feel.
To help you out we have put our top tips below. Keep these in mind and you won’t go far wrong.
Colour – the use of colour in your designs will evoke subconscious feelings about your restaurant. There are certain palates that work together and many websites exist to help you with this. The key here is to stick to natural earth colours. You are selling food and consumable products that all have a certain palate and using these colours to hint at natural and healthy ingredients will be a powerful tool. Olive greens, oranges, yellows, browns, white and black are good. Be careful using luminous or day-glow hues which look un-natural and are more suited to a disco.
Symbols – your designs should be easy to read and your customers should not have to struggle to understand them. Think about using reference symbols instead of making flyers and posters overly wordy. Common uses are the chilli sign for spicy and the V for vegetarian, but why not take it a step further and use pictures to denote menu sections or important information. The designs will be less cluttered and look more attractive on the eye.
Font – the science of font selection is key to your designs. The right font can make or break a poster or menu. Fonts can be funny, serious, easy to read or really test your brain. Don’t be lazy and use fonts automatically selected by your design programme. Test out various styles or combine a few together to create a modern feel. There are hundreds of font libraries out there. Pick a few which work for you and use them throughout your branded designs, they’ll soon become a part of your identity.
Pictures and vectors – bringing your designs to life with pictures is a great way to engage the viewer. Using high resolution photos which can be blown up without pixelating will give an impression of quality and help your customers build a mental picture of your food and atmosphere. If you don’t have your own high resolution photos consider stock or vectors, which can still add extra oomph to your designs.
Whether you design your marketing collateral yourself or hire an agency, it’s important to cast an eye on all the elements which come together to make effective restaurant design.
If you would like to discuss any restaurant branding or design projects with us give call on 020 8746 7366 and we’d be happy to help.
