Is the ease of production hurting your designs?

Once upon a time, when each and every sign project was produced by hand, most sign painters tracked their production time to know how to price their work. Sign production took (and still takes!) time in hidden ways.

Meeting with the client to get a feel for their needs, determining the budget, working through the design process possibly with some research time, maybe making a second sketch with upgrades not discussed in the initial meeting, doing the estimate. Few jobs were identical, so there were usually variables that had to be factored in.

Production was a key issue. The budget kept us mindful of the time allowed for each job. We tried not to over-think or over-design, opting to do our best for maximum impact and readability. The challenge was to create an effective design and make a profit at the same time.

While I sat in backed-up traffic on a trip downtown last week, I amused myself by watching the graphics on vehicles in the outbound traffic. There were plenty of trucks of all shapes, sizes and colors. Some were easy to read, but most left a lot to be desired.

Thinking about the sign painting era, I recalled how it all came down to production time back then. Production time set the boundaries for the project. It required using a mental checklist to create an effective sign while not overrunning the budget:

1. What does the client really want?
2. How can we accommodate that request?
3. Do we need to make recommendations to improve the design?
4. Are we staying within the budget?
5. Will this vehicle advertisement work at both slow and fast speeds?
6. Are we giving the client the best solution for his or her money?
7. Do we really need all that copy, illustrations or pictures?
8. What purpose does each design element serve in our finished product?

Some things never change

In our world, which is even more fast paced, I think those same issues matter. They can still guide us to better, more effective designs.

Maybe today’s folks don’t expect to understand everything they see. Maybe there are too many distractions bombarding us. As I’ve mentioned before, we are now supplied with graphic clutter from every medium— signs, print, Internet, email, TV, you name it.

I think we can capitalize on this. By creating designs that aren’t cluttered and are easy to read, we provide much needed relief to our overloaded viewers. “Hey!” their tired brain will shout. “I can actually read this without much deciphering! It’s easy!”

Let’s take a close look at Bug Pro

I scratched out a few truck designs that show how graphics can be simplified even today. I subtracted what wasn’t really necessary and let the essential message shine through.

Let’s assume a shop rate of $100 an hour and take a look at doing the Bug-Pro van back in sign painting years. It has a multitude of design and graphic elements from front to back and top to bottom. Is this all necessary?

The blue lines on my sketch indicate a background blend of color swashes. Insects are spread over the vehicle, including behind our main messages. Let’s break down the labor costs:

Discuss job with client and work out design: 2 hours

Make a pattern for background blend: 2 hours

Make patterns for creepy critters: 2 hours

Make patterns for lettering: 3 hours

Perforate for pouncing: 2 hours

That’s 11 hours so far. Now we get to work to paint the background and insects. This would take about 6 hours, assuming we used simple, one-color shaded insects. The hand lettering would take about 6 hours. We add an hour for final clean-up and filing the patterns, and we’re at 24 hours total or $2400 for labor.

We add $120 plus or minus for material, round things off, and we are at $2500 for our van project. The other two vans would be very similar in time and materials cost.

I’ll bet you’re wondering why I am estimating these jobs using these age-old procedures. My point is this: The layers of labor costs dictated what we did or didn’t use in our designs. It also forced us to focus on legibility. The client had to get a functional design that they could afford.

Eliminating extra design elements and layers of fluff and clutter not only kept cost within range, but it resulted in clean, crisp, readable layouts. Everyone won. The viewer got a sign that was easy and appealing to read. The client got his precious message across successfully—and stayed within budget. The sign shop got the job and made a profit. The formula still works today if we’ll just use it.

The re-drawn versions of these vans show how eliminating unnecessary elements makes a design stronger and easy to read. It keeps costs down, too, both in production and design time.

Let’s go back to Bug-Pro. Did we really need that swashy blended color background—or what some call “background smear”—at all? What purpose did it serve if the van’s background color was adequate behind this ad? In the revised version, all the text is unobstructed and crystal clear for the reader.

Without the extra bug infestation, we can clear out more room and enlarge “Same Day Service!” Adding the “.com” to our top Bug-Pro logo consolidates space, too. I envision using some high-contrast color for the lettering with lower-contrast color on the creepy critters.

On to the other vans

The second van, Constant Heating, was a case of too many photos and unneeded design elements. Did we really need both hot-cold illustrations? Do those two bolts of power serve enough purpose to keep them on board, too? Do these things help this design and its message or just clutter it with more stuff to look at?

I chose the sun/snowflake graphic because it is a quicker, more powerful image. With warm and cold colors, it will make a more powerful impression at the quick glance most viewers give a passing vehicle.

Eliminating the unneeded design elements gives us valuable space to accentuate our primary text and make a bigger and more powerful statement with text, color and a graphic. Plus, it will take less time and materials to produce. Can you see how the production method of the past kept designs trim and functional while keeping production cost to a minimum? It still works.

Our third design, V&A Roofing, also had a background color blast of sorts behind the main message—a landscape surround as a background for the house. Was it necessary? Maybe. But in reality, not so much. Our spectacular roof on that large home tells the message all by itself.

Now if our client was selling landscape services, too, it would be a must to try to incorporate the two concepts. But here, roofing is our mainstay. Let’s keep the focus on that.

So let’s slide that graphic forward and let the main copy stand on its own. Separating the two serves one essential purpose: readability. Enlarging the logo/text and pushing the home graphic forward creates a more powerful image without the need for a landscape surround. Text over photos always creates visual confusion. It blurs the text and slows reading.

We can’t risk that on the primary message of the sign. After all, that’s the whole purpose of the sign—to get that message across.

The power of simplicity

Each of the redesigns here was developed with production in mind. I simplified the design elements so that they would work together to convey the basic thought and message.

I know we can use the latest technology to insert countless design elements, filling every nook and cranny of available space on any vehicle or sign panel. But do you really need all that? What purpose do all those added elements serve? Worse yet, are they seriously impairing the readability of the layout—turning our visually overloaded readers off and turning their eyes away?

This appeared in the January/February 1994 issue of SignCraft.