parkside cafe menu
Parkside Cafe is a hole-in-the-wall breakfast spot in my hometown of Bristol, Connecticut. For this assignment, I was tasked with redesigning a menu of my choice, the only restriction being that it must fit on one page.
I chose Parkside Cafe as it was a large part of my childhood and is a place where I’ve made many memories as an adult.
research
As a frequent flyer, I didn’t need to spend too much time researching the restaurant. I knew it inside and out! So, I put together a Pinterest board that aligned with the style of the cafe.
In terms of logos, I had free rein, as the cafe didn’t have any actual branding. I took inspiration from the interior decorations and began crafting a logo that I thought represented the Parkside Cafe that I’ve grown to know and love for the past twenty-something years.
As this was my first actual project using InDesign and designing a publication, I also did plenty of research on layouts and existing menu designs. Learning while creating was a challenging yet fun feat.
Looking back, there are so many things I probably would’ve done differently, but I love this piece and it shows my progress over the last few years.
design
Once I created a logo and selected a color palette, I looked back on my research and started to piece together a one-page menu. Being limited to one page was another challenging part of this assignment as Parkside has a large menu with lots of options. This was something I overlooked when deciding what menu I wanted to redesign, but I knew I could make it work.
As I studied the existing menu, I started to see redundancies and disorganization. I resorted to writing out each menu item on a sticky note and, using the L.A.T.C.H method, determined the best way to organize menu items. Sorting by category was the clear way to go, but deciding how broad or narrow these categories would be was unclear at first.
After multiple design attempts, I finally created what I envisioned.
