About
This was a passion project that I did just for me – there was no client. I’ve combined my love of digital “analogue” drawing, japanese culture and vegan cooking.

I have created a series of menu pages for a home-style japanese restaurant, all inspired by dishes in the cookbook JapanEasy by Tim Anderson.

How it is made
First, I made sketches and wireframes. I had to know which dishes would be on what page and which white spaces I had for illustrations. I exported my wireframes from InDesign and proceeded to sketch my fruit and vegetable compositions on these.

All illustrations were digitally drawn in Procreate. I used my “linocut” technique and a series of brushes that gave me the specific paint look I wanted and which felt in line with the traditional home-style story that I’d created for the brand. I choose an earthy turquoise colour that went well with the golden kintsugi lines.

I imported all of my illustrations to InDesign, added some ingredient names in “handwritten” kanji/kana and made my last corrections. Finally, I exported the finished menu pages and set up my mockups in Adobe Photoshop.

Attributes: The mockups includes a selection of components by Pixelbuddha, DesignSquad and yeven_popov on freepic.

Preparations
Prior to the design process I researched by looking though recipes for my fictitious menu and chose a series of dished that would suit the project. I looked for dishes that were traditional japanese, had a japanese name and which had ingredients that could be used in illustrations.