Saw a restaurant menu board that changed how I think about grid spacing

I stopped for lunch at a diner outside Flagstaff last week and their menu board caught my eye. Every item was in a grid with uneven gutters that made it look chaotic and hard to read. That moment convinced me that consistent gap sizing isn't just a technical choice, it really affects how people use a layout. Has anyone else had a real world experience that changed their approach to grid spacing?

2 comments

2 Comments

john_hunt29d ago

Man, that happens way too often. Walked into a coffee shop in Phoenix once where their pastry case and menu board were so misaligned it felt like looking at a broken jigsaw puzzle. You'd try to match a chocolate croissant to its listed price, but the spacing made everything slide around in your head. It's the kind of small thing that throws off your whole decision making process. Makes you realize that gutters and gaps ain't just decoration, they're the difference between a layout that works for you and one that works against you.

michaeladams9d ago

Did that diner's chaotic layout make you actually walk out, or did you power through the bad spacing? Sometimes seeing how badly a grid fails in real time makes the lesson stick better than any tutorial ever could. I wonder if the owner even noticed how much that one design choice was working against them.