 |
A project to make businesses more aware of their customer experience, and how to fix it. By Mark Hurst. |
| About Mark Hurst | Mark's Gel Conference | New York Times Story on This Is Broken | Newsletter: Subscribe | RSS Feed |
Search this site:
Categories:
- Advertising
- Current Affairs
- Customer Service
- Fixed
- Food and Drink
- Just for Fun
- Misc
- Not broken
- Place
- Product Design
- Signs
- Travel
- Web/Tech
Previous: Microsoft Word "New..." command | Main | Next: CitiMortgage website
July 29, 2004 12:08 AM
Broken: Coffee shop sign
I saw this sign near Astor Place in Manhattan.
For ten bucks ("$10.0", as the sign says), this cup of coffee must really be as "extraordinary" as promised. Not to mention shade-grown, organic, and all the rest.
Note to coffee shops - before you get a sign professionally printed, get the decimal point in the right place!
By the way, if you like coffee, try these Manhattan coffee shops. (Also San Francisco coffee shops, Boston coffee shops, even Seattle coffee shops...)
It's very unclear. It could have so easy just said "$1." At least it used the apostrophes correctly!
Michael,
People read English left to right, top to bottom.
The standard way to read the sign would *not* be $ 1 . 0 0
I could understand your argument if the point was *above* the two zeros - but not if they are below.
Seeya
Matthew
Why am I the only one who thinks this is completely on purpose? I know, it's counter-intuitive -- If I saw that sign and I was a coffee drinker I'd think "OH BOY COFFEE FOR A DOLLAR" and then notice it was ten dollars and I'd get a running start and kick that goddamn sign across the street. FIELD GOAL MILWAUKEE!
And this is not what any business owner wants. But businesses fail. They fail for many reasons, and businesses have made worse blunders than this. Gene, I'm voting for "On Purpose."
_@_v - i think the signmaker intended the little decimal point to be a 'nose' to the pair of 00 'eyes'...
_@_v - however it doesn't really work all that well...
This reminds me of the countless incorrect signs I see for .99 cents. It should be 99 cents or $0.99. But .99 cents is less than 1 cent, and is not the intended sale price.
This is a very old-style form of currency design. If you look at old ads, late 19th to very early 20th century, you will see a similar design. It looks odd to our modern eyes since we're not used to seeing it...so in that sense it is broken, but it is not intentionally misleading. It is an archaic typographic treatment that is so out of date it's not kitschy but confusing (it is conceivable that in the not-too-distant future, the cents symbol will be unrecognizable to modern audiences given how infrequently it is currently used).
I was just about to ask why no one has a sense of humor anymore. But then I saw the posting from "she-snailie".
Yes, a nose for sure. I agree!
And, yes, we all can infer that the cup o' coffee is NOT 10 dollars. But, for the purpose of this FUN site - the sign is broken. 19th or early 20th century design not withstanding.
Comments on this entry are closed
Previous: Microsoft Word "New..." command | Main | Next: CitiMortgage website
Sorry, but this cleary reads Coffee $1. The dot isn't between the two, smaller, zeros, it's beneath them. If there had been printed the customary dash there instead of the dot, whould it read "$10-0"?
Posted by: Michael at July 29, 2004 03:15 AM