Restaurant Menu in Ilustrator - Tips please

Hi all, I am a newbie with Illustrator, I used Fireworks for many years to design when Noah was a boy. Since joining here I have slowly used Illustrator to produce only winning design, Saving Fireworks design as Ai format and adjusting/reworking slightly.

I have an outside DC contract for Restaurant menus for one of my website clients I design for, I decided to go straight into Illustrator instead of creating in fireworks and saving as AI then having to slight adjust many elements. Has anyone got any tips on such things as bleeds etc, I have there old menu but only in PDF, I opened PDF in illustrator to give me the size they used, I just need to make sure my bleeds etc are correct and any other tips anyone can share.

My ai file is 300dpi and in CMYK to start, should I be going higher in my DPI?

Thanks in advance.

Im guessing your using images in the menu, so 300dpi is more then enough. Considering your not using thumbnail size images
I dont use AI so there i cant realy help sorry....but this might
Publishing a Multiple Paged PDF Document Using Illustrator | Vectortuts+

Thanks Elijah, I think I have most of the knowledge already reading that tutorial, some good pointers in it though so it was good, client is happy so far ,
I have high res images yes (lots of deep etching still to do), it's a good point, many people forget about that kind of thing.

Thanks a lot

You also have the option to link the images, similar to InDesign, if you want to keep the file size to a minimum. The Links pallet is found under the Window menu

Do you have InDesign? It's really the preferred program for multi-page print documents.

@ Happy GD I have linked the images, It did it auto, so when I took it to be printed for a sample Lucky I had it in PDF. I onlt took the AI file and not the images, It's fun learning

@ JonG303, I have in-design, and usually use it for this type of stuff but I am wanting to learn illustrator more for many reasons and this was a perfect opportunity to learn alot (which I have) with this application.

I am finalising the menu layout/design today, I should hopefully have all 800 sheets printed over the next few days, the client is extremely happy.
Once the menu is finalised I will try upload or link it in the showcase forum, thanks for the little bits of help everyone It's been fun. AI rocks!

Ohh yeah, unlike InDesign there's no native package and preflight in Illustrator, so sometimes even I forget to include the images but for the most part I just embed them if the file size is easy to manage. And yes please it would be interesting if you showcased your work!

Hey,

We had the restaurant Menu launched over the weekend, client is so happy with it, shame they didn't want any images of food in the menu though! I uploaded to my portfolio.
thanks for all help and tips with this guys!

Edited by InspireIT, 04 March 2013 - 05:19 AM.

InDesign Is really the preferred program for multi-page print documents.

Yes this would be easier to produce using Indesign. The page templates make it much easier than using Illustrator. I prefer to use Illustrator for most of my work as I'm more familiar with it, but anything over perhaps 6 pages I switch to Indesign.

Just a brief note... When defining your page setup in Illustrator you can set bleeds. They will show up as a red outline around your art board. When creating your high resolution PDF for print you will get both trim lines and bleed lines when you check them in "marks & bleeds" in the PDF creation menu (save as PDF). I see your trim lines are really your bleeds. Some printers get a little cranky about this. Imbedding your art saves a lot of hassle downstream a la Quark. Your work is really spectacular.

One more thing... If you produce your multi-page documents in Indesign, you can greatly reduce repetitive tasks by using master pages. (set it up once and get it on all pages, and easily handling of left and right hand pages). Like Illustrator, bleeds can be set up as an option in the document set-up window.

If you take the time, setting up style sheets for text-handling will keep everything uniform and greatly ease the endless updates that are the nature of menus.

But the real winning feature is imposing folios for booklet printing. That is, you can automatically impose your pages for press. With an 8 letter page document it will make 4 tabloid pages with appropriate assembly. Pages 8 & 1, 2 & 7, 6 & 3 and the center spread (4 & 5) will be put together for fast pre-press work flow.

This is a real time saver on fast turnaround short press runs. I hope this helps