How to Design Restaurant Menu Covers
Your restaurant menu cover gives customers a first impression about the kind of restaurant your run -- upscale, trendy or family-style -- and the kind of food you serve. Furthermore, customers sometimes keep menus with elegant and unusual covers as souvenirs, which could help spread the word about your business. Paying a graphic designer to design a menu cover for your business could be costly; you can save money and design your own memorable menu covers if you have a computer or some artistic ability.
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Instructions
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By Computer
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1
Open a blank desktop publishing document. Center your cursor in about 3 inches from the top of the page and type the text you wish to appear on the menu cover. You can type your restaurant name, a phrase or simply "Menu." Highlight the text and change the font as desired. Generally speaking, elegant-style menu covers use italicized text.
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Insert a graphic and center it under the text. Restaurant menus sometimes feature small graphics relevant to the restaurant. Restaurants with large wine selections, for example, sometimes include graphics of plates and wine glasses on menu covers. You can also add interesting photographs of your restaurant, the food you serve or the region in the world your cuisine represents.
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Center your cursor at the bottom of the page and type your restaurant contact information. Although menus used in-house do not generally feature restaurant contact information, to-go menu covers provide customers with the restaurant's telephone number and address for quick reference.
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Save and print your document. You can print your menu cover on plain paper or take your graphic file to a printing company and have it printed on colored or textured paper. A printing company can also print your restaurant menu cover if you made it a nonstandard size.
By Hand
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Use a paper cutter and cut a piece of heavy-duty art paper the size of your menu cover. Water color paper, for example, makes a versatile surface on which to draw, paint, create collages or write in calligraphy.
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Draw thin pencil lines across the paper where you plan to write text. Mark the vertical center of the page with a thin line to center your graphic images. The pencil lines help you keep your entire composition centered on the page as you create it.
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Use the media of your choice -- paints, pastels, colored pencils or ink -- to write and draw meaningful images and text relevant to your restaurant. You can adhere photographs and cut outs with high quality spray glue or a glue stick. Let your restaurant menu cover sit overnight to dry, if you use paint, glue or other wet media.
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8
Digitize your image. Take your original restaurant menu cover to a digital imaging company for digitizing. Such companies scan your work and create an electronic file, which you can then reproduce in full-color through a professional printing company.
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References
- Photo Credit Jupiterimages/Photos.com/Getty Images
