Today’s Plan:
- IFS Project Folder
- Menu Project
- Adobe Classroom in a Book Assignments
- Calendar
IFS Project Folder
Please be sure to upload your designs into the folder. Include a .jpg or .pdf (a file I can view) AND a .psd or .indd (depending on what program you used).
Menus
For the next two weeks we will be designing a restaurant menu. This is a multiple-birds-with-one-project project, since we’ll be:
- Learning InDesign
- Learning Design Process and Grid Layout (developing a mock-up/sketch)
- Practicing Typography
Pre-Writing a Design
Most of you are writers. As writers, you all probably have a different approach to pre-writing. Me? I read and write comments in the margins of a book. Then I type out quotes into a Google Doc with some transitions and some analysis. Pieces of stuff. I’m looking for terms I’ll need to explicate. Connectionss to other passages or writers. Places where I can offer a concrete example of an abstract concept. I try to identify what I have to write *first*, what idea or term I need to understand and pin down in order to explicate the other terms/materials/examples I plan on analyzing in the paper.
Eventually I start thinking of an outline (what, in my writing classes, I call a road map: first this paper explains X, then it uses X to examine A, B, and C. Or first it reviews how X and Y have defined Z. Then it compares X and Y’s treatment of Z to M, stressing A and B). Whatever. I do some math and start guessing how many pages I can dedicate to each element in the outline. As a profession academic, I often work backwards a bit on this part, since virtually anything I write will be 8-10 pages (for a conference) or 20-30 pages (for an article).
However we approach pre-writing, I think we can think of it as developing “a sketch” of what our work will look like. It is an exercise in planning organization, mapping ideas. It is also, at least for me, an exercise in space management, making sure I can fit what is needed in the area with which I have to work. I think you can see where this is going. The challenge of the menu project, the reason it is our last mini-project, is that it asks you to squeeze quite a bit of content into a rather small space, while making that content scannable and keeping that content readable.
When I used to design websites, I would always begin with a mock-up: a hand-drawn sketch of site. That would become a mock-up, a Photoshop picture of what I wanted the site to look like. This would include some basic measurements and grid work. We’re going to use a similar, but more lo-fi, approach to developing a draft for the menu project: a hand-drawn map on a piece of paper. We’ll work on this Thursday.
Working in InDesign
Things to cover:
- Layers
- Properties (and text styles)
- Image Placeholder
General Design Advice and Resources for Menu Design
- Here is a link to the restaurant menu mini-project folder. It contains the .indd template file from class and the copy for the restaurant menu.
- Genre Activity: Google Search for “Tips for Designing a Restaurant Menu”
- The top Google hit for Menu Design tips.
- A better article on menu design tips.
- Let’s look at some examples.
- You can design a typical three-fold menu for the project. I found a good tutorial for this.
- Many upscale restaurants–especially those with seasonal menus that change often–go for the one legal size sheet (8.5 x 14).
Schedule / Homework
For Thursday, I would like you to bring a copy of a printed menu to class. We’re going to look at menus for a bit and discuss layout for the upcoming project.
- Tuesday Feb 27: Complete the InDesign Classroom in a Book Lesson on “Working with Typography.” According to the book, this should take around 90 minutes–I should be able to give you 60 minutes in class today. For homework over the weekend, I will ask you to also complete the “Working with Objects” lesson. If you want to get ahead, we will complete the “Flowing Text” and “Working with Styles” lessons *after* spring break. One other piece of homework: Bring a restaurant menu to class on Thursday.
- Thursday Feb 29: Project copy. Invention. Looking at Menus. Art time. Homework: draft up a restaurant menu.
- Tuesday Mar 5: Work day in class. End of class crit. Homework: revise menu.
- Thursday Mar 7: Work on menus. Menu reflection assignment. Final turn-in before we leave for spring break.
