Cover photo: Old Wares – Dirk Rampling and Sonia Grothe

In the days before most everyone could read, the sign maker’s task usually included adding an image to a sign that represented what the business did. (A picture or 3D object that is used to represent a word or idea is called a rebus.) So the shoemaker’s sign was a shoe, and the pawn shop’s was three gold balls, sometimes with no text at all. As more people could read, words came to deliver the primary message of a sign.

But a rebus still works—especially when you can put the real thing on the sign as Dirk Rampling and Sonia Grothe, New South Wales, Australia, did here. A rebus naturally draws the eye because it surprises the viewer—like these 12 examples in “Put the real thing on their sign.” If you can’t use “the real thing,” try a 3D graphic version of whatever they sell, or make or do

Great Big Graphics, Morrisville, Vermont

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