By signcraft
Posted on Monday, September 4th, 2023
“Design is everything. It’s what makes a sign work,” says David Showalter, David Design, Bryan, Ohio. David leans on traditional sign design principles (you’ll find them in Mike Stevens’s Mastering Layout) and a healthy dose of simplicity to make sure his layouts do their job.
The first thing he does is get the copy under control. Customers typically want to say too much on their sign. They don’t realize that most readers have three seconds to read the sign—maybe less. If the sign has too many messages on it, the reader’s brain will often give up before it starts, choosing not to read the sign at all.
“I explain to customers,” he says, “that excess copy will hurt the message they really want to get across. We try to get rid of whatever we can. I can still put the secondary copy on there in some very small copy blocks if they want, but we can’t make that secondary copy big unless we’re willing to sacrifice the main message—and that’s always a bad idea.”
Next, he plans for negative space around the copy. A generous margin frames the copy and makes it more readable and even more important.
“You need plenty of negative space around your message and your copy blocks,” he says. “For the beginning designer, this can be hard to understand. You want to make all the copy as large as possible and fill up the area you have to work with. Your customer usually tells you to fill it up, too.
“But big letters aren’t what makes copy noticeable or easy to read. As your copy gets closer to the edge of the sign, it loses readability. Readability is much more a matter of contrast and negative space than letter size, and that’s what we want, right? Most signs need to be read very quickly.
“You need plenty of contrast—in letter weight, letter size and in color. When things are too equal in a layout—letters all the same size and weight, colors close in contrast—it gets monotonous and boring. Contrast is one of our most important tools.
“The novice may want to add more effects to the layout to make it ‘look cool’—more outlines, blends or fancy stuff. It’s just human nature. But the way to create memorable, appealing graphics is through simplicity.
“I remember being at a Letterheads meet years ago when a couple of young guys asked me to critique their work. I started flipping through their portfolio, and it was sad. Everything had three outlines and they fought with the copy. The software made it easy to add those outlines, but it was damaging the readability of their layouts.
“I had to be honest, so I suggested that they try eliminating those outlines—or at least some of them. They thanked me but seemed disappointed. A month or so later, though, they sent me some photos and their designs were looking much better—cleaner and more appealing. We all have to start somewhere, but if we study the best-looking signs that we can find, we start to get it.
“It’s harder than you think to keep things simple. But with a little practice, it starts to come easy. As you work at it, you can see the improvement in your work. Once you get it, you’re on your way to creating signs that look good and really do their job for your customers.”
