Typography and Design on a dining menu

December 19th, 2007 by Mike | Posted in random |

So, there I was last night with my girlfriend and a few other friends when we decided to go to TGI Friday’s for dinner. The place is definitely not my favorite restaurant in the world (I much prefer Chili’s), but nevertheless we all got a table and sat down to eat. The waitress was all right and I didn’t have a problem with my food, but it was the menu that brought all the attention from me and my buddy Nate.

What you need to know about this situation is that

1. My friend Nate is a huge ‘Photoshopper’ and messes around with a lot of real life photoshop effects and can tell a crappy job from a well done job
2. I’m that much of a web geek that I can (pretty much) do the same

Now, it wasn’t until about a minute after having the menu that my friend Nate pointed out how bland the menu looked. I, too, noticed this, but didn’t care so much as to point it out to everyone else (plus I was damn hungry). Nate went on and on about the blandness of the menu, the crappy after effects of the headings of each sub menu and the awful choices of fonts used throughout the menu. After a few minutes of this ranting, I became severely annoyed with the menu.

It seriously was a bland menu. The entire menu was done in 2 fonts: Arial and some ‘edgy-and-supposed-to-look-like-a-brand-but-only-had-a-drop-shadow-thus-causing-confusion’ font. Oh, and they used bold. A lot. I couldn’t complain about the image selection, as companies like TGI Friday’s tend to use images that make their food look better, but the look of a lack of trying on their designer’s part simply made Nate and myself laugh.

And that wasn’t even the best part.

We hadn’t noticed it until later, but the cover of the menu was absolutely terrible. It wasn’t the design; the design was well done–with a simple repeating striped back ground alternating red and light red–but it was the people featured on the front of the menu.

Dear [deity] these people were awful. Yes, yes, I know of the whole business aspect of things, but these people couldn’t have hit the upper-middle-class bar any harder unless they had some kind of super strength:

• 1 just below average weight, casually dressed black male
• 1 average weight, casually dressed, black female
• Â 1 short and slightly-muscular, very well dressed, possibly gay, white male
• Â 1 very skinny, casually dressed, white or possibly asian female
• Â 1 somewhat chubby, casually dressed, white male

All of which were standing around a table–in that order–holding (assumed) alcoholic drinks and were smiling. What was awesome about this cover was that (another list):

• Â 2 of the 4 dishes on the table were OBVIOUSLY photoshopped into he picture. We could tell given the obviously fake shadows under the tables, the incorrect angles of the dishes in comparison to the table and the ‘real’ dishes on the table.
• The ’slightly chubby’ white male was SEVERELY disproportionate in comparison to the other four people and was obviously pixelated and then brushed over with some kind of blur tool.
• There were even a bunch of terrible drop shadows and outlines on people that even my computer hating girlfriend picked out.

My whole point in slightly mocking Friday’s is that I would assume that a large business such as this would be professional enough to get creative and not be so ignorant with something so used as their menus. Sure, not everyone who goes to Friday’s is going to be looking for these minor errors and such, but, especially on the cover of the menu, these errors were very obvious.

So, ladies and gents of the design world, arse-clowns like myself and my friend Nate are out there judging you and your work… so watch it… haha