Like i've said in previous posts, I wanted to create something pretty simple for the middle of the menu. Beth gave me the measurements for the space which were 41cm wide by 51cm high. She also sent me over a mock-up of how the menu was going to be laid out so I had a better idea of the space I was working with:
This is a rough sketch of what I came up with. I knew I wanted to go with a figure of some sort, so I just went for a pretty basic line drawing of someone sat down holding a cuppa.
After I had it scanned in I put it into Illustrator using the correct dimensions (again, this saves scaling up afterwards) then I just traced over my pencil drawing using an 8pt line, slightly thicker than the window vinyl. I then mocked it up quickly using Beth's menu design to see how it would look once it's finished:
I was pretty happy with the illustration itself, but to me it seemed to make the menu feel a bit empty, I think this is because there is quite a lot of white space behind the figure. I thought about scaling it up slightly, but I didn't think that was the issue; my illustration seemed to be lacking something.
I decided to add in a shadow behind him, and some other smaller details like the stripes on his shirt and the heat lines above the mug. I also filled some of the spaces in solid black as I think this was what was making it look bare.
I was immediately much happier with the illustration, as I felt there was more to it and it had a lot more character. I actually found it difficult coming up with a simple yet interesting image only using black and white. I feel a lot of the time colour is what brings my illustrations to life, but it was good I had that restriction as I now feel a lot more confident creating monochrome work.
Below is the final mock up we will be sending to print. I'm really pleased with it and think the type and the illustration sit nicely together. I'm excited to see what it's going to look like when its been blown up and stuck on the wall in the cafe!
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