So, us EL dudes have been occasionally known to do our writing/eating at the LoSide Diner on Houston St. Good sammiches, good location. The menu design, however? Pretty ridiculous, for several reasons.
LoSide is a diner that's trying to beat up all its competition by being a) a little cute and b) having a logo. This logo.
And what a weird little logo is. It's okay-looking, for sure, but how exactly does it connote LoSide, THE diner for the Lower East Side of NY? There is definitely nothing special about the lower-right-hand corner of this box, which would make sense for something that is both Low and East. In fact, one would think that's the last corner they're trying to accentuate. Is that the point in some weird way? I doubt it. I'm not the only one confused about this, by the way; the LoSide guys themselves have flirted with the idea of flipping the logo vertically on different printed materials just to try and have it make more sense (their coffee mugs have the upside-down version on 'em).
Then there's the "cute" stuff. The LoSide menu looks pretty normal until you get to the one page that has nothing on it except a HUGE picture of a cute blond girl serving food to happy LoSide customers. The weird thing about this picture, besides its ridiculous blatancy, is that it's obvious (even to an untrained eye like my own, this ain't no Stefan post) that the picture is not of an actual LoSide worker. It's just some photo of a waitress with the weird-ass LoSide logo poorly Photoshopped onto her shirt. I wasn't 100% sure about the photoshopping, even when Chris, Stefan and Geoff all agreed on it. However, I became pretty darn sure today when I saw the same stock photo being used by a banner web ad for the Army.
See for yourself!
The LoSide Girl (you have to scroll down to page 8)
The Army Girl (top left)
I feel bad for this girl now. People won't stop writing on her chest. In weird ads.
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Ha. GOTcha.
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5 comments:
I reiterate my theory that the logo shown above is NOT the original logo itself, but is the original logo rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise. This would put the black square of the original logo in the lower righthand corner, where it belongs.
The fact that LoSide itself uses the rotated logo serves as the rope it uses TO HANG ITSELF.
I always thought it was just an L with a little O nestled in its lap.
It's weird that the girl's picture is used to mean 2 semi-contraditory things.
Army: You can do better than this, girls! Get a great job with the army!
LoSide: Hey, dudes. It can't get any better than this. A cute girl serving you your food.
Fneh, not that cute.
Also, man! That is some piss-poor Photoshopping. Leaving the pointless and affected crop marks on each page of the menu and everything.
But also just notably v. bad. Someone thought they could save the cash from not hiring a real graphic artist.
This sort of thin-unncessary patina-of-hip-over-quotidian-
daily-service
is by the way strictly a NY thing.
Trendy singles brake shop called "Stop!"
Dry cleaner's called DRI-ZE. Etc.
Thanks for the feedback..have you seen our new menu...?
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