Eastern Maine Community College, Culinary Class Play Program Design
I was asked to design a program/menu for the culinary class murder mystery play for Spring 2024. Below is a look at what I came up with. This project was enjoyable to work on. I love seeing the college's different areas collaborate to develop creative ways to showcase their accomplishments.
However, my design journey was not without its challenges. As I grappled with the measurements of the program, ensuring it would fold seamlessly, I began to realize that hiring a professional graphic designer is critical in getting your design to look professional. Someone not educated in graphic design may not realize this until they print their design, and it doesn’t look right due to mismeasuring. Or maybe they thought they could get away with creating their design in Canva, which can be an excellent tool for minor graphic design jobs. This job is one of many that would not be one of them.
It looks like a simple task, but sometimes, what looks good on your computer screen doesn’t always come out as you would expect it to in print. I had to play with a few fonts to find the right ones for the inside of the program, along with the captions under the photos. The priority was to make it clear and legible. It is like me trying to make things look more fancy by using a more complicated-looking font, but that doesn’t always look the way you thought it would when it comes to printing. Upon trying a few different fancier typefaces, I decided to keep it simple by using Georgia for the body copy and Montserrat for the captions. I did go a little fancier for the cover and the invitation using Adorn Copperplate. For the body copy on the invitation, I ended up using Big Caslon for its clear legibility.
The class requested a pretend name badge for their character, who was playing a police officer. Here is the result of what I came up with!
Ultimately, the Culinary class was very happy with the menu/program design I created for them and used it for their event! I look forward to creating many more of these types of program designs for theaters and other organizations in the future!