Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

blog.fiddery.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 322 posts

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#261

Post by inigyou »

tgv wrote: post #49
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.…

> how AI poster designs have taken over local advertising Tale as old as time: a race to the bottom. Businesses trying to cut corners, thinking they can offset it against losses from exiting customers. If it wasn't, a lot will just cut more corners.

"You can't shrink your way to growth"

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#262

Post by inigyou »

dinfinity wrote: post #111
joshstrange wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I said it elsewhere in this thread differently but people want to pretend the options are: 1. Paying a local designer to make a bespoke beautiful poster OR 2. Use AI It's not, the money is often just not there to pay someone. So you get whatever the intern or the owner can slap together in whatever tool they know best (which is rarely the best tool for the job). It's completely understandable that they would re…

Lost me at the last paragraph. Comparing billion dollar companies to small businesses does not make sense. The real reason for Electron apps being a thing is that there is very little competition where they are used. If chatting applications could properly communicate with each other based on international standards instead of being silos, nobody in their right mind would use the trash clients that Slack and Whatsapp…

Contributing to this is DMCA anticircumvention. Make a WhatsApp app that doesn't suck? Straight to jail. It's only legal if you make your own entire WhatsApp.

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#263

Post by inigyou »

bombcar wrote: post #168
PyWoody wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

First, an ass buffer is called a rectum. Second, I'd really prefer it didn't overflow.

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#264

Post by tristor »

matthewowen wrote: post #148
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.…

I was talking to my daughter a few weeks ago about a coffee shop that was opening soon and I said that based on the posters in the window it probably wouldn’t be very good. She didn’t really understand how I could draw that conclusion and I explained that you could tell that they had been stretched to fit the available dimensions in a way that clearly distorted the images and text. And that like… if you’re careless a…

> IME the people I know who embody great craft in a field… they care about it in everything they do, and they don’t do a thing unless they can do it with care.

Fully agreed. It's one reason I've taken to doing more things myself at home. I don't even go to coffee shops anymore, I just make coffee at home. For the price of a month's coffee at a local shop, I bought the equipment and learned by practice and watching a lot of James Hoffman (and others) on YouTube. One thing my father taught me that's really stuck with me is: "If something is worth doing, it's worth doing right." That's not just about caring about what you do to get it right, it's also about caring if you're spending your time doing the right things. I do a whole lot less these days than I used to, because I realized a lot of the stuff I used to do was performative or just a waste of time with no upside. The things I do now though, I put my heart and soul into, because I get in return more value/enjoyment from having done it correctly and at its absolute best or at least at my absolute best.

Seeing sloppy work or AI output in the flesh is a hard negative signal for me that I won't engage with a business. Online I see AI output as a signal that whatever business I may be engaging with is probably a scam/scammer. I see interesting things advertised on my feed but hardly ever buy because most of the time their website is clearly AI generated and I have no feeling of assurance that the product is even real or valuable. Something that has had no human thought or reason applied to it is not going to solve any legitimate problem, and therefore I am not going to spend money on it no matter how good it looked in the fraction of a second I saw it in an ad. Seeing that AI output is almost like a stop-break, that lets me think through whether or not its worth having at all.

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#265

Post by DocTomoe »

tminima wrote: post #242
cautiouscat wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a few friends I’d describe as high up in the restaurant industry. They’ll usually be skeptical of a menu with photos unless it’s a mom and pop place that’s been around for decades. There’s a big reason more expensive restaurants don’t have pictures on their menus, even when they’re the best equipped to ensure your meal matches the picture.

Genuinely asking, why is it considered bad? If it is done right, it will guide the customer better on whether they want something like it. We all see the photos/reviews on google maps before going inside a restaurant.

Pictures on a menu implies that the menu rarely changes - menu creation is expensive and slow - and has standard offerings. This then means that food is likely to be less fresh, less seasonal, and more likely to be precooked in large batches and frozen/reheated. In short, it is a red flag for systemic cooking rather than artisinal cooking.

You find that most higher-class restaurants have a one-page menu, with a soup of the day, 4-7 dishes, and maybe a dessert, with the menu being written once a day and clear about what you get.

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#266

Post by ModernMech »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #241
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…

Back in the days, you made the title with WordArt and then add clipart images below

Yes, AI art is the 2026 equivalent of clip and stock art, and I don't know why so many people are threatened by that.

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#267

Post by buellerbueller »

matthewowen wrote: post #148
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.…

I was talking to my daughter a few weeks ago about a coffee shop that was opening soon and I said that based on the posters in the window it probably wouldn’t be very good. She didn’t really understand how I could draw that conclusion and I explained that you could tell that they had been stretched to fit the available dimensions in a way that clearly distorted the images and text. And that like… if you’re careless a…

>if you’re careless about one thing like that you’re probably careless about other things

ah the inverse of the "i'm good at coding, therefore i am good at everything."

I want my restaurants to have delicious food; I don't expect them to have (or hire) graphic designers. Every dollar spent on design is a dollar that is not going to the quality of my food.

The hate on AI menus is irrational, unless eating at a specific place is meant for its societal signaling value rather than for its food.

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#268

Post by buellerbueller »

Planktonne wrote: post #185
teo_zero wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you’re careless about one thing like that you’re probably careless about other things I'm not convinced. This rule holds only if the two "things" are related. But one can have a passion for serving the best quality coffee, and be a total wreck in graphic arts.

If you're really passionate about serving the best quality coffee, you'll be passionate about the experience around that, and you'll put effort in even if it doesn't pay off. AI-generated art signals that you didn't put effort in, and so aren't passionate about the experience, and so aren't really passionate about the central thing. "At least you tried" is not a high standard, but it's the one that AI art fails.

>If you're really passionate about serving the best quality coffee, you'll be passionate about the experience around that

The degree to which the menu is part of "the experience around that" is exactly the debate here; you can't just claim it as axiomatic.

>AI-generated art signals that you didn't put effort in,

or it signals you spend your time sourcing the best beans, understanding the climate of the various bean producing regions, reading trade news for the coffee industry, ...

>"At least you tried" is not a high standard, but it's the one that AI art fails.

Again, says you

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#269

Post by buellerbueller »

Planktonne wrote: post #235
dosisking wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're making a lot of assumptions that don't really hold up in reality.

I disagree, but it's also academic. Even if every single one of my assumptions is unfair, they're still being made by me and others. Restaurants need to consider the reputational risk caused by customer perception. There's a whole film about it [1]. [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382932/

>Even if every single one of my assumptions is unfair, they're still being made by me and others.

stomps feet in anger "Daddy, I want a squirrel! Get me one of those squirrels! I want a trained squirrel!"

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#270

Post by delfinom »

diabllicseagull wrote: post #37

I get the consumers' ick when I see an AI-generated menu, logo, or sign as much as the next person. Beyond that, there is an argument to be made about the discrepancy between the pictorial depictions of a food item and what you are actually served in real life. I wish something akin to Japan's strict food packaging laws existed for restaurants.

It's really easy to fix this behavior, as a consumer start throwing fits and refusing food when it comes out not as the picture. Enough people do it and those menus will change.
Post reply on HN