Use design to set your work apart from the crowd

There are so many businesses on every street of every town. Thousands of vehicles zip down the streets and highways. There’s signage in the open spaces between to attract our attention, too. It quickly becomes graphic clutter, splattering messages and images of every subject type. It really gets overwhelming.

Our visual needs as consumers are fairly simple. We need to understand, at a quick glance, what we are reading. Without pain, what we see must convey a message that will attract our attention in a positive way. You can see that this task is not going to be easy unless we are guided by effective sign design principles.

What should they read first? As a designer, our first decision is choosing the most important part of the message. Then we place that message in a pleasing format, which emphasizes the most important part of the message above everything else.

I know that most of our clients want all their information as big as possible. In reality that never works. The graphic competition between all these elements is immense, and the result is visual chaos.

When we advocate a less-cluttered, simplified layout, we make the sign reader’s job so much easier—and that greatly increases the number of people who will read and comprehend the message.

Good design means setting up various contrasts in shapes, sizes and colors. So many of the signs I see today are not using these basic principles. Line after line of the same size and weight type, with no real emphasis on any part of the message, creates a monotonous and boring sign.

We have a responsibility to our clients to do it better. Well-thought-out, more appealing signs are a better value for the customer. If you’re going to take the time to do a design, spend a few extra minutes to create an effective design that really works and reads better.

It’s a win-win situation. If you make your client look great, you, too, look good. Your signs are an advertisement for you—not only for the present but for a long time.

Tips to make your designs more effective

It’s not that hard to create more effective layouts and set your shop apart from the crowd in the process.

■ Try utilizing two or three type styles.

■ Create contrast by choosing some heavy/bold and some lightweight type. Serif and sans serif type contrast one another well, too.

■ Using geometric, colored shapes with contrasting colors housing the signs messages helps prioritize the messages.

■ Buy a simple color wheel at your local art store to help visualize and choose colors that contrast with one another well.

■ Consider what you should emphasize. In a visually cluttered environment, it’s usually best to emphasize the product or service that the business offers. If the client’s business is in a small town or rural location, the big city clutter might not be an issue. You can take a slightly different approach. Your clients might be better recognized by their first or last names and not by what they actually produce.

■ When possible, survey the sign location, too. This gives you important information as to neighboring signs that will compete for a reader’s attention. Here is your opportunity to use colors that contrast to nearby signs so the sign isn’t lost in the crowd.

Simplicity is the key. We have so many bells and whistles available at our fingertips today. Adding multi-colored background effects, multiple outlines and shapes can hinder the total readability of our message. It’s important to know how much is enough.

Here’s a trick: After your design is complete, try removing effects or elements one at a time until your layout falls apart and is no longer appealing. Add the last element back in and go with that layout.

Now you know your design has a better chance to read well and to compete in the typical cluttered environment. Extra elements that do not contribute or help the readability of your sign should be left off. If we do not follow these principles, we actually make our layout harder for the reader to get the message quickly.

Good design skills can give your sign business an added advantage over others who deliver a faster or cheaper product. After all, there’s always someone who will do it cheaper, as well as one who will claim to do it faster. You’ll be able to show that your product is more effective and a better value.

Let’s take a look at how using the principles of effective design can make a difference. These examples were signs I have seen recently but with the names and products changed. Very little thought appears to have gone into these original designs. One typeface and one size lettering were used for most everything.

The Morton’s truck door had way too much useless text taking away from the company name and its services. I was so shocked when I first saw this truck. I couldn’t even read the company’s somewhat larger name. In my version, I eliminated almost half of the secondary text and pushed the emphasis to Morton and its services. All other text was minimized or suggested to be placed elsewhere.

I think Mr. Kote bought a 4×8 sheet of something or another with the intent to advertise his cake business. He sure does have all the important information on his sign to tell folks what he is offering, doesn’t he? It’s filled with text from top to bottom, side to side, all the same typestyle and the same letter weight. Pick a font, type it all in and stick it on. From up close, it’s “Yeah, big enough and should be ready to read, shouldn’t it?”

But the original layout gives the client another monotonous, boring “can’t-read-this-one-quickly” appearance. There’s no emphasis on anything—just letters crammed together, line after line, with no dominant feature.

Using a few different type styles and type weights cuts to the chase and allows our product to jump forward. Mixing the repetitive secondary text creates more room for our fellow who produces these cakes and information on how to contact him. A simple circle is used to consolidate what he makes them for.

I prioritized the text into some shapes and “open” areas to help the readers find important information. These are simplified examples, of course. But I used not one photo, special background effect or anything that would hinder clear readability.

Uncle Vinny’s Pizza van had the “customer bought the vinyl lettering himself look” right from the get-go. It was boring, monotonous and resembled a cheap business card with no dominant feature and no emphasis on anything. I started by making “Pizza” the main focus, going boldly from front to back.

Remember how busy and cluttered our streets are these days. Certainly the word “Pizza” will at least tell readers what Uncle Vinny is selling. This van is Vinny’s best chance to promote his product, and it has to be readable. All the other information can be minimized with lesser contrast in color, too.

Creating quality signage is fun and certainly a great lifetime career. Going the extra mile and designing effective signage that really works should be our number one goal. That approach is more likely to make you successful than offering low prices or just doing what the customer tells you in the first conversation.

This appeared in the November/December 2011 issue of SignCraft.