Resurrect a Brand - Burger Chef - Part 5 - Vintage Placemat

Let's play revisionist and pretend Burger Chef is still in business. Heck, while we are at it, let's apply a style palette in keeping with their early 1960s marketing. We'll need to recreate everything from scratch. No problem, I've done that for you as part of the tutorial. The blend of designs you see here covers a few decades worth of prime Burger Chef marketing melded with other contemporary designs. I hope you enjoy.

Note that I painstakingly recreated everything you see here from scratch including all logos and even our old friend Jeff. With the exception of the Continental United States map, nothing you see has been Photoshop-ed from other material. It was all re-illustrated from scratch.  The map was edited a bit and plopped into the drawing by leveraging http://diymaps.net/.

Printing the placemat is very easy. You just need a decent printer. The first placemat features three car designs: F100 and VW Bus dominate but there is also a bit of "Let's Eat Out!" inspired illustration at play here.

Worth noting:

1. CKE, the parent company of Hardees, Carl's Jr and probably many chains you know, still owns and actively protects their Burger Chef patents and trademarks. A simple Google search will show you that as recently as 2007, Hardees successfully dismantled a claim by a company that they abandoned the Burger Chef trademark.

2. This fan art project is part of a series. Look for roughly one per week over the next two months. Here are the Instructables you will see as part of this series:
1. Brand Identity, color palette, and logo
2. Cup
3. Road Sign
4. FUNMEAL
5. Placemat
6. Food Service Hat
7. French Fry container
8. FUNBURGER

3. Before we get started, I wanted to acknowledge that it would have been impossible to create this project without the web sites of archivists Jeff Flack and Kyle Brown. These guys have the difficult and mostly thankless job of validating the authenticity and preserving the mountain of material generated from the once mighty Burger Chef marketing machine. Both web sites are worth your time if you wish to read more about Burger Chef. Jeff in particular was nice enough to correspond with me by email and offer encouragement as I worked on the FUNMEAL and Cup. Which interestingly answers another question; yes, Jeff Lives!

Step 1: Select a Placemat Design

Open the attached Adobe Acrobat PDF file. Find a placemat to your liking.

Step 2: Set Print Size Appropriate for Your Printer

I wanted everyone to have the opportunity to print this placemat. For that reason, the default paper size is set to 8 1/2" x 11". While that works 'ok', it is smaller than a standard fast food placemat. Don't despair.

If you have a wide format printer, set scaling to 10" x 14". That is the industry standard size for a placemat. The image quality is set very high and will scale without becoming grainy. If you encounter image quality problems, just let me know and I can post them in a native 10" x 14" format.

Step 3: Print, Cut and Enjoy

Print your placemat, cut it out. I used a full size X-acto guillotine-style paper cutter. You could use scissors if you take your time but I prefer straight cut.

Optionally, laminate the placemat for greater durability.