05/20/2026
As a *polymath* designer, the main way I stay ahead of boos and software that keep updating the visual design “templates” is to just continue to offer clients unique ideas that best serve them and helps them stand out from other related business who rely so heavily on the newest yet widely used app templates (and now AI aggregated from the exact same sources) that they seasonally look and feel more alike, and therefore vent more lost among possible competition.
Plus there is a nuance when it comes to custom design to make sure the design best helps the clients’ needs. A logo design, for example, can have a lot of elements to it if its primary use is for larger displays, but those visually involved designs are near impossible to read when they’re squeezed down to social media profile pics.
Conversely, a simple and straightforward logo can become near useless if it does vary on a popular theme. (Think of how many burger places use a simple drawing or icon of a burger as their logo, making them unidentifiable from other burger spot logos, but everyone know exactly who the ‘Golden Arches” belong to.)
My recently discovered Chinese restaurant G.L. Yummy House is so far the most “old school” NYC mid-/upscale Chinese restaurants I grew you, with seeming a greater care for quality and authenticity, as opposed to anything “fusion”-related and “pan-cultural” mish-mosh of lower grade common denominator offerings.
Without asking, after seeing G.L. Yummy House’s counter-top menu, I appreciated it looking like a traditional Chinese restaurant menu, but I thought it could benefit — not from a complete overhaul — but a look that was readily familiar, but slightly “signature.”
First I replaced the menu restaurant name font with the font used on their outside signage. (I recognized the font as one I already had.) I then did a subtle upgrade on the menu text by using a slightly more modern and clean serif (and half-serif) fonts from the same font family, while creating specific “styles” of line leading, font spacing, font weights, margins, paragraph spacing, and positioning.
(I also added a background watermark of the Chinese symbol “fu” (“good fortune,” “happiness”) using the same symbol the greets customers on the wall of the restaurant’s entrance.)
The differences aren’t necessarily *obvious* — I suspect no one is going to look at this menu menu and exclaim, “Wow, cool font!” — but just maybe subconsciously it might give customers the feeling that G.L. Yummy House might be a step above any other Chinese food restaurants they are familiar with.
