My design critique in Austin made me ditch the fancy fonts

I spent 3 weeks building a menu for a food truck client, using this super artistic typeface I found online. The owner took one look and said 'nobody can read this from a car window,' which stung because I thought it looked cool. I swapped it for a plain bold sans-serif and the orders went up like 20% that weekend. It hit me that I was designing for my own taste, not for the drunk guy at 11pm trying to read the specials. Has anyone else had a client bluntly point out that your 'artistic vision' was just making things harder?

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tessa_murray25d ago

Oh man, this hits so close to home. My neighbor asked me to make a flyer for her garage sale and I spent way too long on this cool script font that looked like something off a fancy wine bottle. She looked at it and just said "my aunt can't read this, she's 70." Swapped it for something plain and she sold half her stuff that day. That was the moment I realized design is not about what looks good on my screen, it's about what works for the actual person using it. The drunk guy at 11pm is the perfect way to put it, that's your real audience, not the design awards committee. Now I always ask myself if my grandma could figure it out before I even show the client. It stings at first but honestly it saves so much back and forth later.