Menu Design on the Computer

[AnxiousCowboy]

I'm looking to design some menus of my culinary ideas... Is there any good software to put together nice menus? I'm guessing photoshop and word, but if there is any all in one type software that would be great...

I'm also looking for some software to record my recipes... Any ideas? Word and Excel are too primitive... I'd rather something actually meant for recipe organization.

[smangold]

QuarkXpress is an excellent design software. The learning curve isn't too bad either.

I have used it for brochures and postcards and will soon use it for a flyer and takeout menu.

[JoRic]

I use InDesign for my menus, and find myself using it for almost everything. It's Adobe software, so if you know Photoshop, you're halfway there. It's really easy to use with Photoshop, especially on a Mac- you can just drag the photos into the document.

[KenBurgin]

If you're using a Mac, just use Pages, part of the iWork set - drag photos in easily and it has templates for menus.

There's also one called MenuMaker at http://www.themenumaker.com but the designs are a bit old-fashioned.

Ken

Profitable Hospitality

[Morten]

I would say that what software needed depends a lot on what you want to do.

Quark express and indesign are both very good programs, but are made for the professionals (not to say that others cant use them).

Office and openoffice could be used too if the menu is going to be all text.

[KarenDW]

I use the "draw" component of AppleWorks. Text and graphics can be moved as independent items, but proportional scaling is not an easy operation. It's a low-budget solution for simple layouts. InDesign is a great pro-tool, and may save you a lot of time (and therefore chargeable hours) in the long run.

[JimH]

Back when I was in the business we just used Word. I recently bought a program called PublisherPro 2.0 to make an employee benefits handbook. It was pretty easy to use out of the box and seems to be less memory devouring than Photoshop. It has templates & graphics/photos and many fonts.

[Jakea222]

I was in marketing before becoming a chef - all of those programs are good, I use Publisher because the club uses it - I knew nothing about it - it is easy to pick up on - some of the others took me some time to rock n roll with,,,they are all very good if you have time tp play