Starboard menu

Starboard is a restaurant in San Francisco’s Mission District that wants to keep the old punk rock aesthetic of the neighborhood alive. Before I started the menu, I did a lot of research at the San Francisco Public library, ransacking their restaurant ephemera collection. Each era had a few fonts that seemed ubiquitous. In the early part of the century, I saw a lot of Bodoni and Copperplate. Mid-century menus featured a lot of Memphis and Futura. In the end, I treated fonts like ingredients. Some of them, like Akzidenz-Grotesk, serve as the heart of the dish. Others, like Chevalier, are used more like seasoning. My goal was to create a design system that is every bit as eclectic as the food, while paying homage to the great legacy of Bay Area restaurants.