Gourmet Society restaurant guide 2009/2010

The project

One year after Fat Heads had put the finishing touches to their 2008/2009 UK restaurant guide, The Gourmet Society, one of the country's leading dining clubs, had expanded to a over 3,000 restaurants and 30,000 members. Having produced the guide for them the previous year they were keen to utilise Fat Heads' efficient XML technology to ensure that the guide was ready in time for launch.

The Gourmet Society now had three times as many restaurants as the previous year but were keen to limit the number of pages to approximately the same number. They also wanted to make better use of their introductory pages giving the reader a greater insight into the dining club experience before they moved onto the directory pages.

To ensure that we fit all the restaurants into limited number of pages Fat Heads redesigned the guide to be more of a listings directory. The Gourmet Society were happy to reduce the amount of information available on each restaurant as this also had the added bonus of encouraging the reader to use the website.

Out went the restaurant photos and blurb and in came the fresh, new colour icons. The clean, neat structure, made easier for reader browsing, was broken up with restaurant photos and website adverts sprinkled throughout. The introductory pages were given a more 'magazine' look and feel and the regional categories were each given their own distinctive color scheme.