Last updated on December 7th, 2021
Be it a Restaurant, Cafe, or Pub, no eating joint cannot do well without having a mesmerizing menu card designs for the customers. A professionally created menu card design is not only a part of overall friendly ambience of joints but is also crucial for creating a well-recognized brand identity for your business. But the card must be of unique design and reflect personality of your restaurant. It must surprise customers with its way of presentation, display of dishes, prices, and with overall look & feel.
There is always a huge demand for menu card designers. After all, the business of pubs and restaurants is increasing by each passing day. These businesses’ have to lure customers with many marketing tricks and advertising.
According to an estimate, in the U.S, annual sales in the restaurant industry are $799. Food and beverage purchases alone have soared to $279. Also, the U.S has more than 1 million restaurant locations.
With the expansion of the restaurant market comes the competition. Both the new and established players have to devise new marketing strategies. Having an impressive Menu card design is part of one such strategy.
Every restaurant makes best efforts to come up with a fresh and creative menu card. Remember that a uniquely designed menu card using a menu maker can be your chance to make a first and lasting impression on the customers.
But a menu card design is not just about incorporating colors, images, fonts etc. More than that, the card has now become a tool for tricking its customers in thinking what a restaurant want them to remember.
Menu card design is no more a random list of dishes. The menu card designers use some psychological tricks to make you choose certain dishes.
When people come to enjoy food at your restaurant, they are looking for a great dining experience. Remember, they are looking to feed their voracious appetite of enjoyment.
They are not just looking to indulge in different cuisines served in the restaurant. Your menu is the very first thing that the customers come across when they visit your restaurant.
So, make sure you do not treat your menu as a simple list of dishes and pay extra attention to your menu design. You can also take the help of menu templates available online to create a stylish menu card.
Here Are 10 Best Creative Menu Card Designs That Inspire
01. Cellarmaker Brewing Co,San Francisco
The Cellarmaker menu is a brilliant menu design that never fails to impress. This impressive menu design does not only provide you with the required details about the beverages served. It also comes in extremely handy when you need to recall and decide which beer samples you liked the most.
Let me tell you how? Every customer is offered some free brewery samples and they can strike the options after tasting and this technique works wonderfully. This truly helps the customers as there are many beverages, appetizers, and cuisines to choose from and one may easily get confused. ‘Gamut’ is the talented designer behind this impressive menu.
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02. Vera, Saragoza
The team at printing craft workshop El Calotipo created the amazing menu for Café Vera. The menu design for Café Vera is in thick wood and has been designed intricately to impress the onlookers.
The menu has a white lettering that the Café has printed in-house. They have smartly printed the prices in stickers to ensure they are able to update their menu in case there is a price change for a certain cuisine. It surely is one of the most attractive menu card designs.
03. RAGU Cafe, Novosibirsk
Ragu Café’s menu has colored photographs of the delicious food items served here. The photographs are in the menu to give the customers an indication of what a particular cuisine looks like.
This makes it easy for customers to choose their favorite cuisines. There are not many restaurants that have such menu design and this is what makes this menu design so unique.
04. Sano Juice, Barcelona
Spanish juice chain Sano’s menu design is ultra-minimalistic and vibrant. The designer Marina Soto has cleverly used gorgeous gradients of color to create impressive menu card.
The other side of the menu features mono-weight illustrations that add glitters to its appeal. The type chosen for the menu is a rounded sans serif. Indeed, this is a lovely design.
05. The Pelican, Singapore
The Pelican’s menu design makes good use of sea animals and human characters. Singapore-based design agency Foreign Policy has created this inspiring menu by mixing human caricatures with sketches of underwater creatures.
The design expresses the dual function of the restaurant cum bar as in the evening, The Pelican turns into a neon-lit groovy bar in the evening from a quiet dining space in the afternoon.
06. Montero, Mexico
Mexican based agency Anagrama has designed the creative menu for Montero. The design promotes the restaurant brand by incorporating the element that depict the colonial period.
The menu design is successful in glorifying traditional kitchen values. The restaurant uses local raw material in preparing the dishes served to the customers.
07. Hubbly Bubbly, Orlando
A fun menu design for a fun little restaurant, Hubbly Bubbly’s menu is created by Florida based designer Mark Unger. It is an adorable design which makes use of bright colors on every page.
This menu design makes it clear why vibrant color scheme and fancy typefaces remain the best elements for menu designs of small and local business.
08. Fade St. Social, Dublin
Illustrator Steve Simpson created the beautiful menu design for Fade St. Social in Dublin. The menu has gorgeous drawings that aptly typify the great quality of food and fun served at the restaurant.
The design also successfully expresses the chic ambiance, vivid atmosphere and the true-blue Irish character of this popular restaurant.
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09. Holly Burger, Spain
The inspiration for Holly Burger menu design comes from the graphics of 1940s. Designed by Manuel Astorga and Rodrigo Aguade, the menu creates an American-style brand with a mix of different style references.
Vital elements of the design such as vintage, hand-written American typographies and banana leaf wallpaper find their roots in the significant designs of 1942. However, make sure that you do not deviate much from colors, typefaces etc elements used in your logo design.
10. L’Encant, Spain
Spanish creative agency Nuria Vila created the menu design for the popular bistro, L’Encant in Spain. The menu design celebrates the Japanese folding fans.
It has a wooden cover and stone paper has been used inside to enlist the specialties served at the bistro. Spanish design agency Nuria Vila has created this impressive menu design for the restaurant.
Designhill, a leading graphic design crowdsourcing platform, boasts of many inspiring menu card designs in its collection. We give here two of the designs. These card designs were created on this marketplace in response to the clients launching several menu card design contests.
01. Uncommon Grounds
The client Ramos Taylor launch a menu card design contest on Designhill. In the design brief, the client wanted ‘a Urban Modern theme, something fresh with little or no pictures.’ Responding to the contest, 8 designers submitted their finished card designs. But the client picked up the below card design. The winner designer Ramos Taylor was awarded the prize money of $349.
[Source: View Case Study On Designhill]
This is a simple card that lists the dishes neatly at one side. The choice of colors is based on the client’s brief. Red is the chief color for catching the attention instantly. Red is also the color for passion, love, and excitement, which the dinners when eating in a nice restaurant.
02. Boylan Heights
The above menu card design for the client Alex is another memorable piece of work from the collection of Designhill. The client had started a restaurant recently to serve breakfast, lunch and dinner. The brief stated that the menu card should showcase the restaurant’s delicious food.
Alex received many designs from 10 designers in response to the design contest. The client chose the below card design as the winner of the contest. The designer Grace Diaz was awarded a prize money of $149 for the winning design.
[Source: View Case Study On Designhill]
The card design has a big picture of a dish with a detailed description about it. A purpose of this design seems to provide more information about the dish. This may help the customer to order for the dish.
So, what do you think of this list. Can you add more impressive menu card designs to this select list?
If you are a restaurant owner and need to redesign your menu card, a way to do it effectively and in an cost-effective way is to crowdsource it.
Designhill is a leading graphic design service marketplace where you can safely launch your menu card design contest for the desired results. In a short period of one or two week, you will receive dozens of unique card design ideas from many card designers.
What is more, you get back your entire money under 100% Money Back Guarantee scheme from Designhill in case you do not like the designs, which is unlikely to happen.
Conclusion
Menu designs must be unique and creative ideas. These menu cards are impressive and memorable due to strategic use of the limited space. Each detail displayed in these cards has a purpose. All the colors, fonts, images, space etc elements contribute to building a restaurant’s brand image.
