Designing menu systems
from content before visuals

Menu projects rarely began with a complete set of materials. The product list might be available before the photography. Prices might still be changing. Categories might not yet be final. Several people could be contributing information at different stages.

Waiting for everything to arrive before beginning the layout would have delayed the project considerably, particularly because organising the menu content often required more time than placing the final images.

Instead, I started with the information that already existed.

Before considering how the menu should look, I worked out how much content it needed to hold. Products had to be classified. Related dishes had to be grouped together. Sections had to be distributed across pages.

Some categories required more space than others, while certain spreads needed enough flexibility to accommodate photography that had not yet been produced. This created an early version of the menu without finished visuals – a practical way to complete the most time-consuming part of the work while other assets were still in production.

Each restaurant had a different identity. Bunsik was bright, youthful and product-led. Bullgogi required a more refined dining experience. Gogi and Pochawa Grill followed their own visual direction. The menus were not expected to look related simply because they belonged to the same group.

What remained consistent was their purpose. A menu still needed to tell customers what was available, help them compare options and make it clear where one category ended and another began.

That meant the underlying structure could remain dependable even when the visual language changed completely. The design process did not begin by choosing a layout that could be repeated across brands. It began by organising information in a way that could later support different layouts.

Many of the restaurants served food that local customers might not immediately recognise from its name. A written description could explain the ingredients, but it did not always communicate the appearance, portion or way the dish would be served. Photography therefore carried part of the explanation.

As more images were added, the menu could easily begin to resemble a catalogue. Every dish competed for space. Sections became harder to separate. The purpose of the layout was not to make the menu appear minimal. It was to create enough order and breathing space for a large amount of information to remain readable.

Designing several menu systems made it possible to see the difference between repeated content and repeated design. Some restaurants sold the same cocktails. The names, ingredients and photography remained unchanged because the products were unchanged. The surrounding design did not need to be identical.

Each cocktail section was rebuilt to sit naturally within the visual language of its own restaurant rather than copied from one menu into another. This allowed shared information to remain accurate without making the brands feel visually interchangeable.

The menus were developed in two layers. The first organised the content – what belonged together, how much information each page could support, and how customers would move through the document. The second translated that structure into the identity of each restaurant. Photography, typography, colour and graphic details were added only after the content had somewhere to go.