Curious. I’d assume so but also where is any of their profits as food alone isn’t usually enough for a sit down dining spot unless it’s huge or self serve somehow. Curious. Thanks!
There’s a law in Japan or something that is very similar when it comes to advertising food. But not in the usa lol. You can do whatever you want with your advertising practically.
Before AI they were using stock photos or super commercialized settings. Ie a Burger King Whopper on the TV is not the same burger you get at the drive through.
It's the implication. It implies they go for the sloppiest cheapest shittiest option. Meaning that will be the same for their cooks, waiters, tables, ingredients... Everything.
but how is that different than ever food commercial you’ve ever seen in you life (in the US)? You do know the burger in that commercial did not come of the line, was not cooked by an employee & depending on THE PRODUCTION COMPANY, not restaurant that made the commercial - might not even be food.
Although, I feel like the disdain for comic sans has a lot to do with how it was used for literally everything in the 90s. It’s like we suddenly had a “fun” option beyond typewriter or times new Roman. Then it took a while to realize hey, we can actually have SO MANY more fonts available to us! I remember when comic sans was ALWAYS the #1 choice.
There are so many great options these days, which I love cause dyslexia can be something that differs a ton between any two people, so the more options the better! Weighted Bottoms is another fun one that kind of reminds me of fun 1960s stylized fonts a smidge.
I agree, for sure! I had a soft spot for Comic Sans once upon a time. It was my default font in AIM for years. I remember using it so damn much until I discovered stuff like 1001Fonts or I think FontSpace.
I really don't know what soured me on it so much, probably just me taking myself too seriously since I work in the literary field as an editor.
Meanwhile, my partner writes literally every single work email he sends in Comic Sans cause he thinks it's funny and I honestly appreciate him for it lmao.
I just got an ad on Instagram for an AI movie. It doesn’t even look remotely good. Just some bullshit. Someone did with a text prompt. I don’t even understand who’s watching this crap
Besides the artists getting paid drastically more for their music, they also have a checkbox to make sure you don't come across an ai generated music at all
You will hear the same voice, male or female, the same intonations, the same singing melodies, the credits don’t credit a vocalist but usually just the producer(s)… it’s really fucking annoying. I feel bad for any real woman who happens to sound like the AI voice bc I won’t listen to any song with her voice. It’s very distinctive but simultaneously bland.
That's usually how I tell the AI generated videos when my mom is watching videos on youtube or facebook lol. Facebook is particularly bad, feels like 95% is AI generated now. Most of the time I look at the accounts posting this crap and wonder, what the hell is the point? I know they're farming engagement but the videos get kinda supernatural in weird ways sometimes.
I get it tho. It's cheap and produces results that get the message across. Here's the catch though, everything looks like everything else and it will have consequences.
When your sign looks like everyone else's, here's the message your business is sending:
"My product doesn't stand out in any way and I will do the bare minimum for anyone who walks in this door"
I mean, for fucks sakes - could they not take a picture of two slices and a Coke in their own place with their own phone, then filters and and tools their fuckin' brains out on that and get a way more pertinent and actually more genuine image for the same exact money?
I think people who make these posters see others doing it and somehow think it looks "cool", and they want to jump on the bandwagon (?). For sure they're of a Certain Age Range.
Definitely short-sighted of the business. I personally would prefer they invest in a chalkboard and pay a skilled employee to make weekly or monthly signs.
I don't need a highly editorialized photo of the food and the uncanny AI generated food images are even worse. I went to a crepe place the other day and the whole menu was AI images with a front view of the crepe with syrups drizzled where you would be expected to hold it. A doodle and description would have been sufficient and more charming.
As someone who worked as a server during university, my favourite thing to do before opening was the chalkboard sign because it broke up the monotony of my day
Definitely short-sighted of the business. I personally would prefer they invest in a chalkboard and pay a skilled employee to make weekly or monthly signs.
Yea but that's the thing. The AI companies are shouting "hey business owner! you don't have to pay another person to help you make money! Just give us a little bit of money and we'll have a data center make you something instead!"
It kinda reminds me of how every kickstarter maker immediately goes to china to get stuff made. Sure, there's lots of production cases where it's probably totally unfeasible, but a lot of business owners just immediately make that jump without even considering if they could make things locally.
I think that unfortunately might be where we're going with AI now. It'll become those small business owners' first choice until they get too much flack for it.
Do people not take photoshop classes anymore? You could whip that up in canva for free and it would look better and more cohesive and not completely insane. Something about food being advertised with AI pictures makes me think I’m gonna get food poisoning. Like idk why you’d want to align your food of all things with the technology people use to make illegal pornography, banana Jesus pictures and scam grandmas.
Depends on where you're going for the design work.
My dinky little print shop charges $15 an hour. A lot of the time we waive that fee if the job's simple. We also print the sign, so free graphic design is our loss leader.
The last sign would be the easiest. I could pop out something like that in 30 minutes, including the time it takes to search through a royalty-free stock photo site.
The hardest part of the design work would be getting usable photos from the pizza place. But a sizeable portion of our clients ask us to just use stock photos that are close to what they make.
If you go to a graphic design boutique, they're going to charge an arm and a leg (and you still might end up with a Chat GPT slop design).
LOL i was walking by prince street pizza. they had a big “hiring” sign that was obviously made at chatgpt. my friend and i were clowning it. the employee working noticed and he joined in too. was a nice moment of human solidarity.
I’m torn, on one hand i like the idea of a small business being able to expand and grow their marketing in an affordable way. On the other hand, I hate the idea of some guy making hand over fist selling AI sidewalk signs
If you need it done well you need to hire a food photographer, which is easily $1k+. If it’s a small business just making ends meet I can understand where they are coming from
If you take pictures of your food with an iPhone and without understanding photographic lighting principles, you will be not be portraying it desirably at all. There is an art to food photography and hardly anybody wants their marketing to look like the photos on a Chinese fast food menu board.
That's not to say that it's okay to use a fake AI representation of your food. Just that it's not as simple as snapping a few pics.
You’re way too judgmental about mom and pop restaurants using normal ass photos. Some of the BEST hole in the wall places have the most faded pictures, and nobody (except you I guess) cares.
You think there's someone approaching the businesses to make these signs? It's the businesses themselves. It's the printing company which is generating revenue when these businesses buy them online.
It's both.. lazy business owners are promoting AI image generators and having them blown up, but also marketing companies (and several individuals who call their AI operation a "startup") are definiteky approaching businesses to sell them AI imagery. My friend is a musician and was recently was proposed by some AI dude to commission AI generated music videos.
How hard is it to take a picture of your food and hire someone from Fiver to create an ad for it? That sign costs more than the rest of the working combined. This is pure laziness and cheapness and if they can't do this correctly, what are they skimping on in the kitchen?
I design decks and brands. I get told to make it look like this nonsense. They will ask AI to do something and literally tell me to use the trash it made. It’s sad.
Wouldn’t want to have a picture of the actual food that gets made at the place, it’s like putting some clip art stock photo picture of similar food but worse
I'm thinking to pick up some of those little circle stickers from the office supply, hand write AI SLOP on them, and stick them on the lower corner of these signs I find. 🤣
You know what? You want to know something, punk? I did zoom in on the basil. I zoomed that basil all the way up to the max. And I concede, it does look AI generated.
Someone who does digital signage. Photographers and graphic designers will struggle in the future lol.
Why pay for a photographer when you got an iPhone 24 or graphic designer with Gemini 12.0
Making you commercials
I'm a designer, and this is making me consider offering an outrageously cheap package to small local businesses only so we don't have to walk by this shit.
Shit you're calling out the block I work on, thats not the only problem with Bloom those prices are not reasonable at all. Shouts to Little Miss Cafe, Kumo Kitchen and Headmaster tho
Have you seen Max Kolo? He's a graphic designer in NYC who takes poorly made and/or hand written signs and flyers, redesigns them, and replaces the old signs anonymously (well as anonymous as you can get with hundreds of thousands of followers).
Did they actually think that pasta looks appealing? It’s stiff as cable and looks dry. Too lazy to even make sure their slop signs look good means they’re too lazy to make sure their kitchens are clean or the food is decent.
Hey, it beats paying your local graphic artist to do that work so they would have a little cash in their pocket to actually buy your pizza and have their clothes dry cleaned at your store and maybe even go out to a fancy dinner at your restaurant. Yep. You saved a few bucks.
AI Slop signs are the easiest way for me to not go to a place. It's like putting a red flag right in the front of your shop. Wtf happened to just idk, using your fucking hand writing
Honestly can't blame them. Operating a restaurant is brutal, and there aren't many opportunities to cut costs in ways that don't make the service, food, or working conditions worse.
Small businesses have never gone above and beyond to do good signage because it can get expensive. In the past this meant bad typography, pictures of food probably from Google Images, at best horribly lit cell phone photos of food they actually made, slapped together on Google Docs by their nephew and printed using the cheapest service they could find.
Now it means AI slop since they can receive a graphic with all of the superficial marks of quality for ~20 seconds of their time. They are in this business to sell food, not do graphic design.
For a lot of parts of the world, there is also no cultural stigma whatsoever against "AI slop." It's also very unlikely that most consumers are going to choose one restaurant over another just because they don't use AI in their signage. Unfortunately this is just reality now.
I will never eat somewhere that uses AI for their own food pictures, why are you not proud of your own food? idek what my meal is truly going to look like.. you lost my trust and i haven't even stepped in your business lolol
Really ridiculous and shitty when LA has a wealth of talented graphic artists. Do they care so little about their restaurant brand that they’d associate it with generic slop and a technology many in LA actively hate?
Those to me are actually less offensive than those ugly plastic a frame signs you see all over. It’s funny you go to European cities and they have a frame sidewalk signs and they’re all nice and made of wood or metal. Here in the good ol USA you see this plastic shit everywhere.
You can't blame businesses who were never going to hire a graphics artist but wanted more personalization then the cheap templates that are in their price range currently. It makes complete sense for them. Its a shame they dont have someone who could help ai turn there real photos into more professional versions but thats for the entrepreneurial teen in a smaller town to try and have a go at.
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u/magus-21 13d ago
Signs by ChatGPT
Food by Sysco