Class assignment
One of the larger projects for my Advanced Graphic Design class at Santa Clara University was to create a restaurant menu and new logo for one of my favorite restaurants. We were tasked with creating a menu that prints on a single sheet of 11″ x 17″ paper, with a fold-over panel on one side.
Mobo Sushi was and still is one of my favorite restaurants, so I chose them for my subject. I talked a friend into driving down to Santa Cruz with me for “research purposes” so that I could take pictures of the menu for reference. And we also had delicious sushi.
Design challenges
The first challenge I faced was obvious as soon as my friend and I sat down in the restaurant: Mobo Sushi’s menu was far too large to fit on a single sheet. They have close to one hundred different rolls, as well as entrees, drinks, side dishes, and appetizers.
The way Mobo Sushi deals with their large menu is to use a large pocket cover with several inside pockets for printed sheets. This allows them to replace single sheets rather than reprint the entire menu if any edits were needed. However, these menus were cumbersome at the small tables, and often had loose printed sheets tucked inside them for seasonal specials.
I could either trim down the menu, make the text so small it becomes illegible, or add more paper. I spoke with my professor and asked if I could add a second sheet to the menu. They reluctantly agreed, but told me they’d want extra work on the layout and typography of the menu. We decided I would staple the sheets together, to keep that part of the assignment simple.
Solving the problem
By changing the menu’s presentation to two sheets of stapled paper, I made it easier to handle, and closer in size to their printed inserts. Ideally, my design would be printed on a heavy, coated stock, or even laminated for extra durability. It would also be small enough, sturdy enough, and lightweight enough to stand up on its own, so it takes up less space on the table. More room for sushi!
Designing the menu and logo
Menu design and layout
I created my design file in Adobe Illustrator with artboards inside the file so I could see the whole menu at once and keep it visually cohesive.
The first design motif I added was a bamboo sushi mat as the outside cover of the menu, and a textured green graphic for the folded panel. This gives the customer the feeling of unrolling and unwrapping a sushi roll to get to the menu.
I chose to use simple fonts and a two-column layout for better readability; shorter line lengths and indented dish descriptions make it easier to scan through the menu quickly. I sorted the dishes by category, and arranged them in as logical of an order as I could.
One of the largest challenges was balancing the impressive variety of rolls and dishes available with keeping the text large enough to comfortably read. Arranging the different menu sections also proved to be a challenge, since keeping everything in a logical order didn’t always lend itself to the most visually pleasing layout. In the end, I ended up with some negative space at the bottom of some categories, so I created a few simple theme-appropriate vector illustrations to comfortably fill them and add some visual interest to what’s otherwise a wall of text.
Logo design
I wanted a logo that works on dark and light backgrounds, monochrome and full color. I used the same font for the logo as I did for the menu headings, and added a set of chopsticks. To add some visual interest, I offset the chopsticks from each other and angled them, and also poked them through the second O of Mobo.
On a recommendation from a classmate, I used Google Translate to get the Japanese characters for “Mobo Sushi” and put those in the background of the logo.
