Corporate side
Letterhead
Business cards
Envelope
Printed media
Bakery menu
Cafe menu
Paper packaging - different sized wrappings/bags
Coffee cups
Plates
Leaflets/Small promotional materials
Stickers
Proposals
Website
large promotional material
I started by doing a few layout ideas for the corporate branding and for the menus.
Overall I want to keep the layouts very simple and consistent across all media. Through the menu I want the layouts to be identical, but I am playing around with the idea of two sections on the same page - however this will be something dictated by the actual food.
I stared with the corporate side of collateral as these are the ones which I have a good idea of how I want them to be. From doing the layouts I didn't really find it beneficial because I already had a very clear idea of what I wanted and found that it was a bit of a waste of time thinking about other layout designs which weren't as good.
Lettehead:
I have two variations that I am a bit torn between. They're identical aside from the line being in gold at the bottom of the document. I think I'll print them both out and decide which looks best when I have all the collateral together. My thoughts at this point is that the second will work better, but we'll see.
Business cards:
I decided on just using the two main colours of the branding and making very simple cards. I didn't want to over complicate these at all, but I do think that these can develop with the development of the brand if I find something that works well in the future.
Following this I started working on the menus. I started by looking up different recipes and deciding exactly what food I wanted to have at both the bakery and cafe.
I initially decided on the sections I wanted.
Bakery: Bread, Biscuits, Cakes/Tarts, Pastries.
Cafe: Biscuits, Cakes/Tarts, Pastries, Coffee, Other desserts.
I initially looked online as there are a huge amount of food websites, and ones which are dedicated purely to Italian food. I also found one which was dedicated to Italian bread, and gave good histories about them.
While doing this research I found that there were quite a few breads which were made at specific times of year such as Easter or Christmas. As there were a good few, I decided that this could be it's own section in the Bakery Menu. This means that the Bread section isn't so long, and it is clear that there are breads that are baked for a specific reason.
I found a good amount of recipes online that I was confident with, however decided to look in a couple of different Italian cookbooks that I had at home. This gives recipes of the specific chef/s, one's that are quite individual and traditionally Italian that I didn't find online. It also gives me a good chance to look at imagery of the products. Recipe books are quite like a menu in the fact that they have to make the food look enticing, so the photography in these books is something that I can take note of.
Recipe books:
Recipes found:
The main thing I found in these books were desserts. A couple had bread recipes in, but nothing new from what I had previously found on food websites/blogs. Some of these desserts/biscuits were individual to the cookbook, and seemed like really good end products so I decided to use them
Something that I picked up on while reading these cookbooks was that the layout was obviously very simple, and it works really well and looks professional. With this in mind I decided that I wanted a very simple layout in the menus, with an image on the left hand page and text on the right hand page. I think that that's a good way to do it because when you flick a page, the first thing you see is the right hand page, so it makes sense to have all the written information there.
I wanted the pages to be simple, keeping in with the contemporary modernist feel I was going for, but I didn't want them to just be white with just the text. I looked through the layout ideas that I had done and decided that I quite liked the idea of the boxes around the text. With the body copy in black, I could make the box edges the gold or the brown as an accent.
I found that when I tried the brown accent it didn't work as well because it looked quite similar to the black, whereas the gold is contrasted against both the black and the white stock.
In terms of imagery for the menus, I decided that each section should have one full page image. I also want to play around with the colour choices that I outlined in the brand guidelines. I like the idea of not having a full colour image, maybe having a monotone gold or brown instead. That way it means that all the images I collect will be consistent in colour, which is something that I wouldn't be able to do if they were full colour.
I have decided that for the imagery I will use stock photography. The main reason behind this is that it is only a short brief and getting together what is needed and shooting it professionally would take quite a while. If this were a longer brief I would do this, but because I don't particularly want to focus on this area of the design, I don't think it would be productive or beneficial to. I think the photography of the final products is far more important in the presentation of the work, so will focus on photography when it comes to that point.
I have decided to go with the monotone brown as I think it's a good contrast against the gold lined box. I think that the gold monotone was a bit too bright and quite hard to look at, whereas the brown gave clear indication of shadows and was much easier to look at. The also think the brown is a bit more interesting than just a grayscale image. The brown monotone also keeps that colour in the branding. It isn't something that I've used too much so having this as the main colour for the images keeps it there and makes sure it's not just forgotten about.
I did have the idea of having each side of the business to one colour - so the Bakery would be brown and the Cafe would be gold - so the menu colours would be flipped over, however after seeing how the image looked in the gold monotone, I don't think that it works well. While it would have been good to have it flipped, I think the gold is just a bit too bright to have one its own.
With that decision made, I create the two menus, making them identical in design, aside from the covers, where I decided to keep them as just brown and gold for each side of the business. I did think about the idea of having an image as the front cover, like on the brand guidelines, however I don't think it's work well over all three documents. Having the solid colour also keeps in with the idea of simplicity.
Bakery Menu
Cafe Menu
Following these menus and stationary I decided to make a couple of changes to the brand guidelines. While I want to stick to them as much as I can, there are obviously going to be things that need changing as I develop this project as I don't want to restrict myself to what I wrote in the beginning of the brief.
Something I updated was the front cover. While I thought the initial front cover was something I could move forward with, I found that I disliked it very quickly, and that a full bleed image works better, and keeps in with the simple covers of the menus.
I also played around with the colour types for the imagery as well. As the gold monotone didn't work particularly well as it was quite bright, I wanted to try the idea of a gold and brown duotone. A reason for this was that when I decided on changing the cover for the brand guidelines, I didn't want it to be just a gold or brown image, I wanted something in the middle so it keeps the branding even.
I found that this works well so decided to include it into the brand guidelines as an option to use further in the branding. I think the colour is more towards the brown than the gold obviously, but it does work well and the use of gold does add to the image.
Updated Brand Guidelines
At this point I am quite happy with the progress I have made. Something I need to take into consideration is how I want to print the menus. While I want the interior pages to be white stock, the exterior pages is something I need to think about. The main thing is to keep them in with the colours I am using for this brand. The obvious choice would be to just print the colours out so I know they will be the same, however I do like the idea of having the actual stock that colour and potentially printing onto those in some form. I think this will develop as I continue with the project though.
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