It’s well-known that color can affect appetite. But what of the power of an appropriate font? A well-written description sounds scrumptious, but with a difficult-to-read, unappealing font will the effect be the same?

An elegant but casual restaurant “with unpretentious, traditional Italian fare,” the Aria Trattoria struggles with a bland menu design. To entice its savvy Washington, D.C., clientele, this Tuscan-style restaurant needs a captivating new menu design with a more attractive layout, clean paper stock, and legible copy. Marketing graphics coordinator Erin Weber says the perfect design “would attract more attention, respect, and traffic. Diners would say, ‘Great menu— can I keep one?’”

Designer Mandy Barrett agrees. Noting its elegance, she maintained the burgundy and black palette of the original design to separate menu items. “The word Trattoria in the logo was too small and Aria was too spread out,” comments Barrett. She tightened the letters, enlarged Trattoria, and added an Italian tile-inspired icon. The icon was created by keying the letter h in the ornamental font family Monotype Sorts.

The font Chocolate Box (www.1001freefonts.com) helps set the sections of the menu apart from the dishes. “I love Chocolate Box,” says Barrett. “The caps have a nice scroll to them.” She used Goudy Old Style—a clean, elegant, easy-to-read font—for the descriptions. “I went on a hunt for a text font that would blend well with the logo font,” the designer notes.

“The layout needed some serious tweaks. I decided on two columns as the best way to present the amount of dishes they have. I formatted the text, then figured out in which column to fit items so there’s a nice balance. Prices should be lined up with the name of the dish to make them easier to read,” explains Barrett.

The restaurant menu’s redesign, with its delicious fonts, smart layout, and easily recognizable logo, is sure to drive D.C. to gluttony.

1. Original menu Created by restaurant staff, the current design has a number of problems. “The font is oversized and generic, the copy is cramped, the layout is boring, and dish names and ingredients run together,” remarks Aria Trattoria’s marketing graphics coordinator Erin Weber. “Nothing lines up. The paper that it’s printed on looks dirty.”
2. Revised logo The original font is employed in the logo revamp, but the letters are tightened and enlarged. Designer Mandy Barrett also added an icon for visual impact.
3. Fonts After choosing Goudy Old Style for the dish descriptions, Barrett selected Chocolate Box for its swash capitals. Both faces work well with the existing logo font, Trajan.
4. Color The original color scheme, burgundy and black, is elegant and cost-effective.
5. Paper The redesign had to maintain an 8 ½ x 14- inch paper size and must fit on a leather backing. Barrett recommends the new menu be printed on a plain white card stock with a satin finish. 6. Menu grid It was hard to discern dishes and ingredients in the original menu’s layout. The new layout incorporates two columns, two fonts, and two colors. 7. Reasonably priced Prices in the original menu didn’t line up, so it was difficult to decipher which price reflected which dish. Barrett’s new design makes certain prices are clear. 8. Icon Representing an Italian tile, Barrett added an icon to the logo by keying the letter h from the ornamental font face Monotype Sorts. She also incorporated the tile icon in the menu list to separate the dish sections.