By signcraft
Posted on Monday, November 25th, 2024
Primary signs—storefronts and freestanding signs—get a lot of attention in SignCraft, but many businesses also depend on smaller secondary signs to tell their customers all sorts of important things. Rob Cooper, Koh Tao, Thailand, does plenty of them because tourist businesses often use A-frames and other small signs to direct and inform guests.
Solid layout principles are the key to creating any effective sign layout, and in a way, they are even more critical on secondary signs. Often there is a lot of copy to manage or the sign has multiple messages. The key information must be read quickly because many viewers don’t read any further than that.
Take a look at how Rob handles signs like these. In many ways, his layouts are like the showcard layouts of yesteryear, because they deal with the same challenges. You’ll see how he uses contrasts in color, size and line value to organize the message to make the reader’s job easier. All are hand painted, too.
Plenty of negative space, paying attention to what’s in the foreground/middleground/background, and maybe adding a simple special effect, along with interesting color combinations can transform a sign from one that is barely noticed to one that makes people want to read it.
