Phở 85

Phở 85 is a locally owned Vietnamese restaurant located in Bentonville, AR. The logo is bold and bright with colors bearing significance to Vietnamese culture. Included in the brand’s typography are diacritics utilized in Vietnamese writing to indicate tone and meaning. The use of diacritics are present in the logo and the menu.

The menu design is intended to resemble the noodle bowl in the logo. The semi-circular booklet is contained within a red sleeve that—together—completes the image of the bowl. This approach was alternative to most restaurant menus that are standardized to single-sheet or brochure layouts. This piece is rather interactive, forcing customers to undertake various steps to make their selection. To effectively utilize the circular, yet unconventional shape, some illustrations were included throughout the menu that abstractly represented the food items served by the restaurant, the section headers were lined along the edges of the curvature, and menu items were concise and sparse throughout each page, thus creating visually balanced and simple spreads. To further enhance customer reading accessibility, direct Vietnamese translations of each dish are provided as subtexts below each headers. This may help Vietnamese-only speaking and reading customers understand what they are ordering. On occasion, there is a case of vice-versa in which non-Vietnamese (but English) speaking customers are learning Vietnamese and engulf themselves into the culture.