With this in mind and my previous pieces of branding, I drew up a rough sketch of where each bit of information could be places, Diving up specific sections for starters, main courses, puddings and drinks.
I also drew up some space that allowed the customer to understand how the restaurant should be used. Much like Nandos the customers sit down, decide what they would like to order and then do so at the till point before sitting back down and waiting for their food to arrive.
However, Unlike Nandos, airport eateries get very crowded, especially if there is a lack of them within the space. At Nando's customers are greeted by a host/waiter/tress and shown to a table, where they are asked 'Have you been to Nandos before' and are given specific instructions on how the restaurant can be used. Due to airports being busy, the general idea of staff is to take orders at a bar, which are paid for there and then as a better policing of payment, serving food and clearing tables.
The menu would be the first thing that any customer may interact with within the canteen and therefore I thought that this would be a good place to include this information, much like the menu design for the Saltaire bar in Leeds bradford airport.
Again, I wanted to print this onto the same brown craft paper (which I would have to spray mount onto a stronger stock for durability, however in industry I would have it double sided on a stronger stock with a higher gsm, however this is very expensive to buy in small amounts and is therefore unattainible for this project). As I am wanting to print onto a paper that is not white, or a similar colour, the best way for me to achieve bright colours such as the red of my pallet, would be to screen print the menus.
I began to follow the sketch in indesign building my menu, However I decided to change the header of the menu slightly so that I would be more consistent to other parts of the branding. As you can see, I was particularly inspired by the food label I had created in re-tweeking the header design.
Original header design:
Food label design:
I then moved onto creating the rest of the menu and entering the content following the sketch I had done:
However I found that the layout didn't particularly work, It actually seemed like it would be harder to read than the 'traditional' layout of a menu in a 2 column list with the emphasis on the horizontal.
And so instead of having for coloumns across as shown in the above design, I decided to reduce this to two, and have the content in a list, one dish underneath the other.
I continued this onto the other side to complete the content of the menu.
Although the full design appears in black and white, the document is set up for screen printing and so less important details such as some of the illustrations and the countries which the food come from will be coloured red. This will further adhere to the consistent theme on other printed material such as boxes, bags, cups and labels.
Producing the menu:
In order to print the menu I set up two screens one with the red layer of both sides of the menu and another with the black. I screen printed the red layer first, and the black second to avoid any distortion of colour. I found it quite tricky to do screen printing (I hadn't done much before) and when the prints weren't coming out right before (patchy) I considered swapping to digital print. However, I am glad that I stuck to screen printing as this is the process that gave the best result in colour. Trying to place such a vivd red onto the craft paper in digital print wouldn't have worked out so well as the outcome would have been darker. The screen prints are not perfect, which I think adds to the project, making the canteen seem more rigid and organic.
Producing the wrappers and boxes:
Producing the wrapper pattern was also quite simple and followed exactly the same preparation and process as printing the menus. I exposed two screens one with the red layer of the wrapper on and one with the black layer on. I printed these red layer and then black layer second. It took a couple of times practice to register this properly as can be seen on the material I am handing in however it worked out very well in the end. This Is the wrapper design that I also wanted to place around cups however I could not find cups quick enough for the hand in and so this is something I will leave to be proposed.
Producing the stickers was really easy once they were designed. I simply made a document in illustrator in which The design to be printed onto the adhesive paper would be printed, and the second layer was just a stroke around each design in the shape which I wanted cutting out.
Napkins and Apron:
I had planned on wanting to screen print the napkins and the apron, However I was unaware that to screenprint fabric in the studios that it had to be done in a different way. When doing this in the studios you are to prepare screens via the fabric route much like you would when preparing to flock and foil. However unaware of this I exposed my work onto a regular screen printing screen which was therefore unusable. Being on a tight schedule and budget (I would have had to expose a new screen and pay for exposure/fabric binder etc) I decided to try and think of a new way. Although It is the screen print effect I would have wanted for the end product, I had to think of a new way to produce the print via a different process. I had some iron transfer paper from a project I had done last year and this was the quick fix I needed. Although the end outcome was no way the same as a screen printed outcome, I just wanted to display how the design looked on the printed material. I wasn't happy that the transfer paper left a plasticy/satin layer even where there was no design (most obvious on the napkins) and left an off cream colour, however I found the less time I ironed the tranfer paper the more it seemed to reduce the colour back to white. However for future reference I would have liked to create this material through relief printing the aprons and inkjet printing the napkins.
I decided to design a table stand/ number holder as an extra as I had a little bit of extra time. When I had originally design the table stand I thought that the design would look quite impressive once lasercut:
However I found that when I tried to laser cut this shape (through 6mm for sturdiness) that it was much too detailed and snapped as soon as it was lifted from the bed. This is the thickest wood I was told that the laser cutter could cut through, however I noticed when I turned it over that the laser hadn't cut all the way through on some sections.
I went back to the drawing board and simplified the design shortening it down to FS. This would mean less intricacy and hopefully a more successful cut.
Today I went to the laser cut and cut out the more simplified design. Although I had to use a scalpel to release parts of the design from the surrounding wood, the table stand came out together in one piece.
I cut this shape out twice in the 6mm plywood and glued them together for extra sturdiness (I would have preferred to cut it once from a thicker plywood for accuracy but this was not possible). After I glued them together I painted the stand black. It could be possible for the table stands to be painted both black and red in accordance with the canteen colour scheme.
