A vintage restaurant menu: pick an era and stay true to it

First, the era

“Vintage” can mean a dining room from 1900 or an American diner from the fifties. Before choosing a font, decide which era your venue belongs to:

Type, ornament, colour and paper

Type. Every era has its display type: blackletter, Art Nouveau lettering, Art Deco poster faces, heavy label slabs, sign-painter scripts. Use it only for the name and headings; for the dishes, a comfortable serif or sans serif.

Ornament. Rules, stars, diamonds, frames. Few of them, and always from the same repertoire.

Colour. Many old menus and labels were printed in one or two inks: black, red, a gold, a navy. Limiting yourself to two colours is the quickest way to make it look authentic.

Prices. Many old menus set prices in a column, joined to the dish by dot leaders; Tinned and Diner do it that way. In Gazette and Vermouth they sit in bold on the right. In every case, better without the £ sign on each line and with a note at the foot.

Paper. Off-white or cream, matt. If you print on cream paper, check that the accent still has contrast.

Mistakes that give away a template retro

• Mixing eras: Wild West type, an Art Deco frame and polka dots on the same sheet.
• Fake textures: coffee stains, crumpled paper or wood printed as a background. They use ink and muddy the reading.
• Decorative type everywhere, descriptions included.
• Ageing with filters: sepia on sepia, and the text loses contrast.
• Prices on stickers: they break the effect more than anything else.

How to write the dishes

The tone follows the era. On an old-fashioned menu, the classic names and formulas work: “Potted shrimps”, “Steak and kidney pudding”, “Speciality of the house”. In a diner, the all-time combinations: “Double cheeseburger and fries”. Avoid mixing the vocabulary of avant-garde cooking with a 1920 masthead: it shows.

Seven period designs

Gazette turns the menu into the front page of an old newspaper, with a blackletter masthead, double rules and the word “Menu” on a band. Very rewarding for taverns and old-style dining rooms.

Modernista brings back Barcelona around 1900: whiplash corners, flourishes between headings and a trencadís mosaic frieze on the daily menu.

Déco is pure 1920s: a gold sunburst fan, a stepped frame and Limelight type. For cocktail bars and gala dinners.

Vermouth sets the header inside a bottle label with cut corners, in red slab type with stars. For aperitif hour.

Tinned imitates the label on a tin of sardines: a rounded frame, a red ribbon with tails and gold scales.

Diner is the fifties American diner: chequerboard, the name in red shadowed script and prices in pills.

Memphis brings eighties pop: confetti of triangles and zigzags, Shrikhand type and tilted blocks of colour.

Formats that suit them

A4 is the natural format for most of them, and the A3 poster turns them into a period poster for the wall. Gazette and Vermouth look great on the daily menu in A5; Déco and Modernista in a booklet with a cover.

In almost all of them the ornaments follow the accent colour, so you can adapt the design to your venue without leaving the era. Compare them in the menu designs gallery and, for choosing type, see menu fonts. To combine inks the way old labels did, the guide to restaurant menu colours will help.