I’ve been charging up and down the M1 a lot recently and have therefore been sampling the delights of Moto’s service station network.
They’re in the process of rebranding their cafeteria offering to EDC – The Eat and Drink Co.
Looks great, huh? Well, it looks great in isolation and probably looked fab presented on boards in the design agency’s meeting room too.
On the other hand, in situ it looks dated, down market and tired. Actually the cropped pic above from flickr (and by Mr Flickr himself apparently) is very kind to it. All the values that service stations are trying to move away from seem to be covered off by this design. Its more 4 hour old fried eggs and soggy sarnies than fresh muffins and ciabatta.
So our lesson for today is – get your design in situ and let it breathe for a bit, as you can’t design in a vacuum.