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Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

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Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#161

Post by qingcharles »

ryandrake wrote: post #158
qingcharles wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost none, sadly. Most of the population just doesn't have that skill, which is why places like Facebook are just reams of AI Jesus upvoted to the Moon. I saw this menu online the other day, and it's not even discernable from the photo what the food products are; it even sets off trypophobia: https://imgur.com/a/YvyRjts But people are still ordering it.

I agree. For most people I've talked to, when this topic comes up, they'll tell me they don't like AI, but then cannot really identify it. Especially the elderly folks in my neighborhood. You look at their facebook feeds and it's 100% slop. No joke. Every. Single. Post. Is. AI. Slop. And for the most part they can't tell.

The problem is in 2026 I work in this space and it's getting to the point where I can no longer tell sometimes. By next year we're probably all cooked. My first go-to now on an image is TinEye.. if it first appeared before AI then I know it's safe.

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#163

Post by bschwindHN »

joshstrange wrote: post #54

Ok, I'll say it. I like the new menu better. I do not understand the author's aversion. Sure we can talk about "picture of food" vs "what was served" but have you been... anywhere? This is the reality of all food advertisement. I've never in my life been served a plate of food that perfectly matched the picture unless it was a user-uploaded image. Getting a decent idea of what the dish looks like is valuable (especia…

> I've never in my life been served a plate of food that perfectly matched the picture unless it was a user-uploaded image

You can get damn close in Japan. I've even had situations where the food looks _better_ than the photos.

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#166

Post by Rendello »

huhkerrf wrote: post #62
_joel wrote: post #28

Well at least the peas weren't upside down... https://preview.redd.it/the-peas-are-upside-down-v0-5pwo713b...

I don't think that's AI. It looks more like crappy photoshop.

It's been floating around the Internet since at least 2019. It's classic, soulful bad editing.

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#167

Post by furyofantares »

simonw wrote: post #30

I'm fascinated by how AI poster designs have taken over local advertising in seemingly just the last six months - presumably because ChatGPT Images and Gemini Nano Banana finally got good enough at outputting text without obvious defects in the typography. The posters all look good - much better than their desktop publishing predecessors. And yet they also eat away at the credibility of the event or business for me.…

> The posters all look good - much better than their desktop publishing predecessors.

They all look awful to me, visually extremely busy, nowhere to focus. The text is the same. Useless text and visual details everywhere, no opinion about what's important shining through, nothing to focus on.

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#168

Post by bombcar »

PyWoody wrote: post #27
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Writing in signs and menus in chalk has been a signal for a high quality restaurant for as long as I can remember. With photos of the food, and/or ring bound menus being the worst.

I knew someone that actually got a degree in like letterprinting with a minor in menu design. She went from town-to-town creating these beautiful chalk menu designs and lived a pretty modest life. One day a tattoo parlor asked her to make a sign. She did. They asked if she had ever thought about getting into tattooing. She hadn't. They gave her an apprenticeship. After completing her apprenticeship, she's now booked…

Don’t let your memes be dreams! This time next month you could be tattooing buffer overflows on someone’s ass.

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#169

Post by joeguilmette »

dev0p wrote: post #48

The loss of personality is real. The most heartbreaking ones I've seen are in schools, or anywhere that children are involved. For example, at my local preschool there was a wall flyer with information about what to bring the swimming pool. It had the most crudely drawn fishes and crabs and seahorses that I had ever seen. It was clear that whoever drew that had no prior experience with anything even remotely resembli…

The reason is that AI art is now commodified.

Beauty standards, for example, track directly alongside what a body looks like when the owner has free time to spend on leisure. For example, a tan in some cultures used to be ugly and pale skin more beautiful because a tan meant you worked outside in the sun and pale skin meant you could be inside, doing a higher status job or not working. Now, pale means stuck inside working and tan means going outside for leisure. This is suddenly changing, because “being healthy” means you have time to do this.

In the media and art we consume, the amount of human effort involved drives how much we subconsciously value it. Subtle indicators of human involvement in writing, for example, will make us like the writing more. A video clearly made by a real human will be more entertaining. Just like a meal cooked at home by some with passion for the art will always taste better than a chain restaurant meal, even if the restaurant meal is technically more complicated or uses better ingredients.

As AI takes over more and more, its direct output and stuff that smells like its direct output is going to be less and less desirable.

There is a TON of market opportunity in business for people who truly understand this.

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#170

Post by foxglacier »

simonw wrote: post #30

I'm fascinated by how AI poster designs have taken over local advertising in seemingly just the last six months - presumably because ChatGPT Images and Gemini Nano Banana finally got good enough at outputting text without obvious defects in the typography. The posters all look good - much better than their desktop publishing predecessors. And yet they also eat away at the credibility of the event or business for me.…

It's always been like this - businesses signal that they have piles of money to burn by burning it on expensive advertising. Before AI, you would have been dubious of an ad that was amateurish/clipart/etc. because it shows they can't be bothered spending money on professional designers. Back in the day, I heard that websites used Flash content for this reason too because it was expensive to produce.

I think it would be better if consumers stopped using burning money as a measure of whether to buy something.

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