Went to a local bakery and noticed their menu board design was a mess

I stopped into a small bakery in Portland last weekend and their menu board had 3 different fonts and colors that made it impossible to read from 10 feet away. The owner said she just picked what looked nice, but I could tell customers were squinting and getting frustrated trying to order. Has anyone here had luck convincing a small business owner to follow basic design system principles for their signage?

2 comments

2 Comments

dixon.anthony8d ago

Oh wow, THREE different fonts? That's honestly kind of wild! I can't believe she just picked what "looked nice" without thinking about whether people could actually read it. I mean, that's literally the whole point of a menu board - to help customers quickly figure out what they want before they get to the counter. It's not like it's just decoration! Someone needs to gently explain to her that if people are squinting and getting frustrated, they're probably going to order less or just leave entirely.

ben_shah938d ago

My wife and I ran into this same issue when we redid the menu at our church's annual bake sale. She picked a fancy script font for the headings because it looked "festive," but nobody over 50 could read it from more than a few feet away. I had to gently suggest we swap it out for something like Arial or Verdana in a bold weight, and then keep the fancy font just for the event title at the top. Once we made that change, the line moved way faster because people weren't standing there squinting and trying to decode the writing. Sometimes you have to separate the "looking good" stuff from the "being useful" stuff.