A collection of professional menu designs that will inspire you with ideas for your next menu design project.
You will see menu designs for casual and fancy restaurants and bars, fast food places, holiday-themed menus, menus in a vintage style, and many more. These appetizing designs combine good taste and functionality, and they appeal to the senses very effectively. Ready to begin?
Article overview:
1. HQ Photography Menu Ideas
2. Simplified Text Menus
3. Cartoony Menu Designs
4. Classy and Elegant Menu Examples
5. Playful Menu Designs
6. Hand-drawn Elements on Menu Designs
7. Menus in a Vintage Style
8. Holiday-Themed Menu Ideas
1. HQ Photography Menu Ideas
There is nothing more effective in waking the senses than good imagery. This is why most restaurants choose high-quality photography images of tasty and mouth-watering dishes. Lately, designers prefer open compositions rather than enframed photos but both are still popular. Let’s see,
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enframed photography
What is usual for this type of menu layout, is that photos are placed in specific enframed sections – just like a catalog of product shots. There are usually several photos per page but even if it’s one, it is still fitted into a frame.
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open compositions
Open composition photography looks like it doesn’t have any edges. It fully fills the page and gives the feeling that the composition goes beyond the menu pages.
Open composition in photography menu designs can help create the feeling that the customer is looking at a luxury magazine. This type of menu design is very preferred lately, as it appeals to the senses more than the traditional menu layouts.
The text is usually added as separate boxes over the huge background images. These menus are typically very colorful and tend to raise the customer’s interest in trying more dishes from the menu.
2. Simplified Text Menus
Not all restaurants are fans of huge imagery. Sometimes plain text and keeping it black-and-white works just fine and leaves it all up to the customer’s imagination. Here are several examples of clean, text-based menus that are also stylish and designed with taste.
Whether decorated with subtle unobtrusive illustrations or not, these menus usually keep it low. For these menu designs, choosing an unconventional paper might be a good choice and a nice addition to the final look.
3. Cartoony Menu Designs
Cute cartoon menu design with bright colors and great illustrations that bring up the mood of the viewer. These types of menu designs are suitable for more casual restaurants, as well as fast food places and cafeterias.
4. Classy and Elegant Menu Examples
A selection of classy menu designs suitable for wine and food menus in classy restaurants. These menu designs are usually clean and sparsely use colors. They are decorated with ornaments, thin curves, and other details which speak of high class and attention to detail.
5. Playful Menu Designs
There is nothing more priceless than putting a smile on your customer’s face. These menus use fun imagery, as well as bright, optimistic colors to put their clients in a good mood. Great for casual restaurants and bars.
6. Hand-drawn Elements on Menu Designs
Hand-drawn elements always manage to create a custom hand-made feel to the overall design. Whether great hand-drawn illustrations imitating pencil or watercolor drawings, or a hand-written font, these menus make the customer feel super welcome.
7. Menus in a Vintage Style
Vintage and retro menu designs provoke nostalgy and will certainly make your customers feel connected with you in a more special way. These designs use specific color schemes – a little bit duller than usual, as well as grunge effects, noise effects, paper textures and ornaments specific to the designs from the 50s.
8. Holiday Themed Menu Ideas
Throwing a party for a special holiday of the year is a great occasion to surprise your customers with a custom-made menu. Whether Halloween, Christmas, New Year, and Valentine’s day, these menu designs are decorated according to the specific holiday.
We hope ideas are already popping in your head. These inspiring menu designs are surely great examples of menus that combine good looks and functionality. If you’d like to share your own menu design projects with us, go ahead and do so in the Comments section below.
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