I experimented with folding some A4 paper into various sizes to get an idea of what sort of size the menu card should be. In the end I decided to go with a non-standard size. I felt that it should be taller and thinner than any of the standard sizes. I decided to go with 74mm x 210mm, as this is the same total area as the recipe card, which means that you can fit the same number of these on a page as you can the recipe card, which would make for a simpler printing process.
Grid
Because of how thing the menu card is, it was clear that I should stick to a single column. I started off with the same 10mm border as the recipe card, dictated by my web style guid, added in the heading at a size I felt was appropriate, then split the remaining space into 3 equal rows, causing a 4 row grid, where the top row is slightly taller than the others.
Text
I started off using 12pt sub headings and 10pt body text, the same as the recipe card. After some experimentation I found that using 9pt body made the edges of the text a lot neater, as well as providing a slightly larger area for images to be placed in, so I decided to stick with 9pt. It's all centre aligned as that was a feature in a couple of the menus I looked at that I thought worked well.
Colour and Images
I decided to use vectors again for continuity, but I made these ones slightly neater as they had to look a bit more modern, I took inspiration from the vector images I saw in my research. I stuck to the same 4 colours as my recipe card for continuity, but I used the darker brown less sparingly to make the images softer so they didn't take too much attention away from the text. I stuck with the light background because I thought it worked well on the recipe card.
Border
I experimented with using a border as I had used one in the recipe card and I'd seen one in used in the thinnest menu in my research. I found that having the curvy border clashed with the simplicity of the rest of the menu. I found that using a plain 1pt light brown border worked the best.
Changes To The Recipe Card
After considering some of the decisions I made in the menu card, I re-visited the recipe card to make some small changes to improve the continuity. I made the body text 9pt, which makes very little difference, and I changed the border so it matches the menu. I think this makes it less prominent, which is probably a good thing. The main change was the size of the heading text, which was reduced to 48pt (ampersand to 30pt). This makes it the same size as the heading text in the menu card, which I feel is probably important given that they're going to be printed on paper that has the same area. I don't think this makes it any less noticeable straight away.
From Here
I'm very happy with both my designs. I will be using the same layouts to create an alternate version of either which I can print on the back, to make both of them double sided, as this provides further interactivity. I'm happy that from here I can effectively design the rear side of a playing card using this sort of branding.
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