Charlie Atkin created refreshed menu designs and products for their client's bar called Gibson's. Charlie analyzed the existing branding, colors, and styles used in the bar to create cohesive designs that matched the theme. They changed fonts, backgrounds, and layouts on the menus to modernize them while keeping the overall style consistent with the bar. Charlie also created business cards with a QR code linking to the bar's online presence to meet additional client needs. While happy with the final products, Charlie wishes they had taken more risks with redesigning the drinks menu and coordinating the food menu design.

1. CLIENTELE
EVALUATION
Charlie Atkin

2. Audience Characteristics
■ I think that my work will appeal to the audience of my client’s bar as I am not doing a
complete re-do of all of the menu’s and the products that I am going to be making are
going to be more of a refresh of the current menu’s and products that are being used
in the bar. I started by changing up some of the parts of the menu that stuck out to me
and didn't stick with the theme of the menu. I changed the background of the menu to
more of a consistent burnt, aged paper.After doing this I also changed all of the fonts
from a more basicArial style font to a fancier and more western themed font.This
helped to bring the menu more together with a single theme and this helped to have a
smooth transitions between everything on the menus.
■ When looking at the audience for my client a lot of the people who go to the bar are
regulars with some focus being on new comers, but the majority of people who go to
Gibson’s have been before so I used this to my advantage and kept the style and look
of the menus already but just revamped the look of the menus.

3. Design
■ For the design of client project I went to the bar itself and had a look around and got an
idea of the look and feel of the bar. I also looked at a lot of the colours that are prominently
used within the bar and started to use them myself to give the products I was making
myself a more linked and cohesive design all together throughout all of the products that I
would be making. I originally wanted to incorporate the Neon sign that is used at the front
of the bar that makes it stick out on the street and catch potential customers eyes. Another
thing that I wanted to use in the design of my products was the black/grey, with a slate sort
of finish, as well as some wood to give it a more natural look that also links into the
smokehouse part of the bar. I also started to use some colours that are used quite often
used in menus from different smokehouse around the world, when looking at other menus
there were some things that I wanted to keep and use in my own menus but there were
some things that I didn't want to such as with smokehouses and restaurants in the
Southern England area in places like London where on the menu they don’t use the pound
sign or even put the endings of prices such as the 0 on the end of 50 pence.The menus that
stood out to me the most were the ones that were made in the USA as this is where the
majority of smokehouses were made and America have a massive amount of smokehouses
around the country and this helped me to find lots of inspiration.

4. Design
■ One of the biggest challenges that I faced when making the menus was the amount of
typography work that I had to do with the layout of the items on the menu as well as
all of the titles as well as changing up the fonts to a more themed font as well as
editing some of the actual titles to make the fonts fit better with other items, as some
of the title fonts had long tails on them that swoop down and go over-top of the items
on the menu so I had to convert the text to images so that I could erase the tails on the
images to make the text thinner and less droopy, so that I have more room to fill all my
space on the pages with items from the menu instead of empty space taken up by tails
and extra flairs on the fonts.The majority of the images and pictures that I had to use
for my product were all either pre-existing and pre-used images or images I made
myself.

5. Design
■ The main font choice I had was the Bleeding Cowboys font alongsideQuadantra.
Bleeding Cowboys was very thematic and has a very cowboy and western style to it. I
really liked the look of this font as it gave off a western style and this fits very well with
the American Smokehouse part of my clients bar. I also really like the Quadantra font
as it is a more minimalist font that works very well as a highlight font that is simplistic
enough to not draw too much attention but is enough to show the smaller parts of the
menu.

6. Client
■ My products meet my clients needs as a lot of the products I made were more practical
than just posters. My client wanted some business cards and a couple of posters and
some menus as more of a refresh.The business cards were probably the products that
met the clients needs the most as it was his most needed products as he currently had
no real form of giving out his information so the business card were my main focus.
For the business card I had the business owners details as well as a QR Code that
contained links to the businesses social media pages.The other thing I looked at was
the drinks menu as the drinks menu used some themes of western fonts but then at
some points the the menu uses a basicArial font, so I wanted to refresh it by making
the background look a bit more rough and weathered and having the font go through
consistently of the menu.
■ My project also met my clients needs as it was very similar to the themes and colours
that are in the bar as well as some of the pre-existing elements that are used in the
bar.

7. Research
■ I spent a lot of my research time on my audience as this made up the main bulk of
what my project was, the smaller part of my research was looking at previous posters
that my client has used before so that I can find out what style the client has used
before so that the product I created fits with the theme of the bar and the theme of
previous advertisements.

8. Ideas and Planning
■ In my ideas and planning I think that it went very well, the first things I looked at were
different fonts to use for the products that I want to make. I looked at re-branding my
clients workplace, I looked at fonts that were similar to the current logo but had a new
flair to them, then after talking to my Proprietor of the bar said that the logo for
Gibsons was inspired by his Grandfathers signature so I decided to look at other things
that I could modernize.
■ I then looked at menus that gave some inspiration of what I could do with the menus I
was going to make.The menus I found were for American Smokehouses so the menus
were primarily food whereas I found I was modernizing the drinks menu, I decided that
I liked the layout that Gibsons already used and that I would change up the fonts and
backgrounds and I think that my final product looked very good when compared to the
original menu.

9. Production
■ Overall I think that my production went very well. I spent a decent chunk of my time
creating them menu and then after that I began talking to some of the employees to
see what they thought they might need, I came up with some business cards, when I
created the business card I put a QR Code on the card, when I created the QR Code it
came with a free trial that unfortunately only lasted 30 days, but when the QR Code
was live it sent the user to a webpage that gave navigation to Gibson's multiple social
media accounts as well as Gibson's website where their menu and everything else is
about the bar.

10. Final Product
■ Overall I think that the final products that I made fit very well with what my client
wanted. I am actually really happy with the products that I ended up making and I
think that if I went back again I don’t think that I would do anything differently.
■ I think that the quality of the posters alongside with the business card worked very
well, I just think that I would have changed up the drinks menu a bit more and
probably would have been a bit more adventurous. I think that I might have also
attempted to change up the menu and give it a similar theme to the drink menu that I
would create as well.