By signcraft
Posted on Monday, August 28th, 2023
You don’t have to look at too many of his signs or vehicles before you realize Braun Bleamer [Jet Signs, Palmerton, Pennsylvania] is a fan of “super, super clean layouts.” He uses contrast to keep the emphasis on the main message and tries to minimize the copy whenever possible.
Braun pushes customers to keep the copy to a minimum, especially on vehicles. It keeps the layout clean and makes it easier to read. “Often we get a customer who wants a list of a dozen services on the side of their truck,” he says. “I hate that because it really takes a lot of space away from the important message, which is who they are.
“It’s better to keep it simple and let people call you for the details. If people need something the business owner doesn’t do, he can just refer it away. He still wanted them on there, so I put them inside of a charcoal gray stripe that ran down the back of the truck. I didn’t think it would fly, but when he saw the drawing he understood why I wanted not to take any space away from his main message.
“Few people really ever read the secondary copy. You’ve got the logo, the name, the website, the phone number, then this long list of services. And you have about three seconds to read it all. It’s impossible. Your brain tries to take it all in but can’t, so you get none of it.”
“Even the phone number can really detract from the message unless you subdue it,” Braun says. “So I often move it to the bed of the truck or the front fender to open up space for the main message. Hardly anyone has time to write down a phone number anyway. The same goes for web addresses. If you can make sure they got the business name, though, you’ve done your job.”
“I’ve done a lot of race cars for this Blue Mountain Woodworking and did a new logo for him for this truck. I modified the two Ns in their name by flipping the letter U over and squaring off the corner. It adds some interest. I often alter a letter or two in a logo to make it unique.
“I like my grays and I use them a lot. It’s such a good color. You can use a lot of gray on a sign then use one ‘pop’ color with it and it always works. It looks classy.
“I tamed the web address down on the door because I didn’t want it to compete with everything else. I often capitalize the first letter of each word in a web address like this. It helps you pick each word out and makes it easier to read and remember.”
“If I have a list of services, I often put them in a stripe away from the logo. They’re there if someone wants to read them but they are obviously secondary.”
“I’ve known Rodney for years. He has a lot of equipment, and it all had cookie cutter lettering. We did a nice sign for the front of this business a couple of years ago, but he never used the design on his vehicles. When he bought this brand-new truck recently, though, this is what we did.
“Car racing is kind of a big deal around here, so a lot of guys like that look for their trucks. They like bold lettering, strong colors and some race car striping or graphics.”
“This company sponsors a race car that we letter, and they’ve been around forever. They got a new van and wanted a new design for it. It’s black-on-white with a little red and a little gray—and plenty of negative space. The services and phone number are down in the black stripe.
“Their plan was to use it on new vans as they got them. They were so happy with this one that we wound up redoing their whole existing fleet. It’s always cool when you do a design for someone and it has so much impact that they want to rebrand everything.”
“Here the city and state had to be on there somewhere but it really wasn’t important. I just took it down in size and put it on top of the phone number. When it comes to giving up the space I need for the main message, I’m pretty stingy. Plus, when you have something in the layout that is really small it makes your big copy look even bigger.
“This is about the first really nice truck this client has had, and this may be the first professional design he’s had. The nice thing about a logo that is a tight unit like that is that if he wants to get decals later to put on other equipment, it’s easy for me to produce graphics that he can pick and apply himself. When the design is a bunch of bits and pieces the customer is seldom going to get them on straight. Release and repositionable films have made it a lot easier for customers to apply graphics.”
