Foil samples

I finally got into the print rooms today and got a feel for how I want my menu designs to look. After originally wanting to spot varnish and do some foiling, time was not on my side anymore as it would mean preparing a screen for each design and for my overall designs I have 21 menus I want to print. So I had to think logically. The idea of this brief was to produce a design with a high quality finish, involve my type and layout skills and gain more experience in a print process. Therefore I decided to choose the foiling to produce the lettering for the menu covers as it was a much quicker process, but it was something I had never done before. I had a mini induction in it and realised it was very simple and produced some really nice results.

Originally I imagined my menus to have a black outer cover and I had seen examples of black varnished text on black stock which I really liked. However, I wasn't thinking practical for the context of my brief, which I am glad I had pointed out to me, because if the customer was looking at the menu on an evening in the hotel restaurant, the cover design would be barely visible to read unless it was shined towards the light.

So I went back to my other idea of silver or gold foiling for the cover. I haven't finished with my layout experiments yet, so I used a simple idea I had previously done as a sample to take to print.

Here it is in gold foil, but I didn't realise there was so much choice of what colour foil I could use, so I experimented with a bright pink as well to see how well other colours looked against the black.

I am really excited about these prints, as simple as they are, and I am really pleased I have learned a print process that I can now confidentally use again without any help. No doubt it will be popping up in other briefs from now on!

Now to continue designing the cover layout.