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Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

blog.fiddery.com

21–30 of 322 posts

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#21

My personal opinion is that these days most people simply wouldn’t be able to tell that the photos are AI generated, and even if they could, they wouldn’t care or have any strong thoughts about it. I don’t think my parents or any adults aged 50+ in my family have spent any time at all playing around with AI image generation tools or comparing AI-generated images to non-AI-generated images to be able to have any opini…

Senior citizens are the most vulnerable

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#22
I think if you showed these before/after menus to people from 5 years ago, most would tell you it’s a massive improvement.

But now many of us have been trained to detect slop from miles away so it just comes across as cheap.

I often feel the same way when I glance at a project’s documentation and it’s long and full of markdown styles and emojis: “the author didn’t think about the users at all, they just wanted to get this over with quickly, so now I have to be super suspicious of everything I read here and it might end up being a huge waste of my time”. A few years ago I’d probably think “wow, emojis!”

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#23
There is this new thing where people love to show off their sophistication that they can "spot AI". Every time they see an a Claudeism, every time they see an emdash, they talk about how they feel sick to their stomach and are ready to boycott the business that may or may not be guilty of the high crime of using a computer tool.

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#25
Low effort products will be used by low effort companies. In the case of restaurants, this might not necessarily be bad - I’ve been to amazing taco/burrito shops w abysmal menus. But if I went to a “high end” place with an AI menu and instagram decor - bad, bad sign.

I genuinely think AI companies need to worry more about their brand. Just through how their products are used, they are perceived as a marker for low quality.

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#26
It'd be one thing if it was just the problem of a generic AI slop graphic design that all looks the same, the problem is when it generates pictures of food that literally looks disgusting. I've seen some of these posted online where the food literally looks like it's infected (fries with weird black splotches), or the jalapeños look like tires, and it all triggers trypophobia.

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#27
post #3

I do think that AI signage/advertising is the new signifier of low-effort, low-skill output and that is how it will be perceived by clientele. Similar to someone just scrawling a sandwich board sign in chalk (which at this point I would prefer). Businesses will stand out from a taste perspective by continuing to hire human effort to make recognisable human output.

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 so far into advance that she closed her book to the public.

I think about her all the time now, what with software engineering going the way that it is. What lateral like passion could I transition to, as she did?

Re: Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns

#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 hard to trust a poster when the quality of the design has zero relation to the amount of effort that went into creating it.

But is that a widespread feeling, are the vibes bad for regular people, or is this effectively just old man shouting at clouds?

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