EXAMPLE 213
Humorous treatment of titles and odd menu arrangement. Design by the Griffith-Stillings Press, Boston, Mass.
The banquet program not so many years ago here in America and in England was commonly called a bill of fare. Now only the cross-roads hotel and the cheap city eating house have bills of fare. The polite title is now “menu,” pronounced men-yu or meh-noo. Some writers claim the word came to us from “Manu,” a mythical sage said to have sprung from the god Brahma. Yet the dictionary would seem to indicate that the word is French, meaning small, and was derived from the Latin minutus, little. It is possible that the small portions now served in many restaurants suggested the use of “menu” because of the contrast with the generous “helpings” of the old-fashioned meal. In 1512 a “shore dinner” for an individual consisted of “a quart of beer, a quart of wine, salt fish, red herring, white herrings and a dish of sprats.”
EXAMPLE 214
Suggestion for a menu page, introducing a bit of fun
EXAMPLE 215
A classic menu page. Designed by D. B. Updike, Boston, Mass.
In the banquet program the printer has great opportunity to make use of his inventive faculties. No other kind of program allows of such varied treatment. There is no limit to the shapes, the type arrangements and the color treatments that are suitable for banquet programs. An association of leather merchants holds a dinner and the members may find beside their plates a program bound in a miniature hide, the sheets of the program attached by a leather thong.
Bankers meet and the program may be in the form of a checkbook.
For an athletic association an oval-shaped program suggesting a football will “score.”
Newspaper publishers will appreciate the menu list presented as a papier-mache matrix of the type form.