Want to Improve but I dont know how

[Giuzeppe]

Hello. I have been working in photoshop few years now, now Im learning new adobe SWs. But if you want to create something there is two aspects. Idea and Realization. For both you need to know something. Realization is in my case knowledge of photoshop. But I dont know how to get ideas. Like okay I get few when I was just looking around me but Im not sure about them. I dont have any trouble to re-work something. Like cover for magazine. When I was doing it last time it was like 99% authentic.

My friend told me about burger house near where we live. So I tried to create some kind of corp. identity for them like menu, name tag for staff and so on(just for fun).
On the left there is thier menu and on the right there is my work. (sorry for slovak language)



Doesnt matter what Im doing I still feels its crap. So tell me if its good or not, what is wrong and how to get more confident about my ideas/work. I tried to apply for a job as designer but get denied....

[Pet]

A good way to get ideas is to look at the world around you. Want to redesign a burger joints identity, look at how other burger places have theirs. You will want a complete, and unified idea to work on. Your use of the ribbon with the logo you designed don't really fit together. Colours are great, but maybe think of a different way to display titles and names. Play around with different fonts. Maybe this design could use some sleek thin sans serif font. You don't always need to add pictures of the product on the menu, again it is down to style, but often when they do it isn't just down 1 side, but in different spots on a page, to break it up. So you might have 1 featured meal on the top right, with the items on the left of it, then a little ways down they might feature one on the left, so now the menu is on the right. This breaks up the flow, getting people to look around.

So just look at other restaurants and their identity. Look at the use of colours, fonts, placement, or even their use of negative space.

PS, I don't even consider the original menu that great. The typrwriter font is tacky, and can be hard to read, no idea what is with the skull and cross bones? in the background. But, they did organize the menu to be a 1 page, not a book for ease of looking through. Name of item, price and ingredients for all is listed which is good.