By signcraft
Posted on Monday, July 31st, 2023
Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you don’t get much say in the layout of a sign. Customers get ideas in their head, or they have strong preferences, or they just don’t care about your thoughts on the job. Often they have seen a design online that they like and want a version of that—even if it may not work well for their sign.
Every sign person deals with this. Lane Walker, Solo Signs Reno, Nevada, encountered it recently when a customer brought photos of some old fire engine lettering that he had seen online.
“The lettering had a sort of bold Clarendon look,” says Lane, “and he said that was the look he was after. The lettering was on opposing arcs, which the motorcycle guys call ‘rockers.’ He wanted his first name on the top arc then his last name on the arc below. That would leave a big hole right in the optical center of the layout, which is not a very good approach. It’s the opposite of what you want—you want that important message right in the optical center.
“I tried to explain that to him, but he was quite adamant that he wanted it to look like that old fire engine but without the Maltese cross symbol in the center. So what do you do? I ended up doing a modified version of that layout. I focused on making the letters look cool, making sure they were legible and properly kerned. The result wasn’t the most effective layout, but it was acceptable and satisfied the customer.”
In the days before computers, most customers came to a sign painter expecting him or her to handle the layout and design. Often, they had their copy written down but that was about it. They gave it to you and told you to do a good job on it. They saw you as a professional and you were seldom questioned about your approach.
“Back then,” Lane says, “if you explained that you needed to reduce some of the copy so that you could get their main message across in the few seconds that people would see their sign, they usually understood that. They would defer to your judgment. It was a different world.”
Today, people want to be much more involved with the design of almost everything—houses, interiors, signs. It may be because they can Google something and be presented with 5 million images. They like this and like that, then then try to squeeze it all into their project.
Each layout presents a challenge
“Almost every sign presents some sort of design challenge,” Lane says. “As a designer you work to come up to an effective solution to that challenge. When customers see another sign that they like, they are really seeing the design solution to someone else’s design challenge — not theirs.
“Most likely, their sign has a different challenge. It could be the length of their company name or the amount of secondary copy they want. It could even be the descenders in their name. They may want a script, but some words get very hard to read as a script. The design they brought you may not be appropriate for the image of their business. I usually take a few minutes to explain this, and sometimes it works.”
Build your reputation
Fortunately Lane has plenty of customers who see him as the pro when it comes to the layout of their signs. He also gets customers who say, “I’ve seen your work and you obviously know what you’re doing. Do what you think is best for my truck…”
“It helps to have a body of work that goes before you,” he says, “but it doesn’t mean you’ll never have to deal with customers who want to be over-involved with the design. when you tell them what you think in a professional, respectful way, most will at least listen politely. Some will be open to your approach. Others, though, still have this other design in their mind that they want you to replicate for their sign—even though that design was done for a totally different situation.”
A positive reputation is built by consistently producing quality designs—not by just doing whatever the customer says they want. If you don’t offer a better-looking, more effective design as an alternative, or at least make an effort to improve their homemade “design,” you run the risk of developing a reputation that works against you.
And if they are not open…
If the customer is obviously obsessed with what they brought to you, it’s probably best to go to your Plan B as soon as possible. That may be to tell them you’re not able to help them with this project and refer them to another sign business. Or, you may say, “I think I can tweak this a little to try to get you the best value from it…” then suggest minor improvements and take the order. But there’s little benefit in investing more time with a customer who isn’t interested in you using your skills to give them the best value for their money.
If the client is open to a better version, they’ll get better-looking graphics that are more effective–like these original designs by Lane:
