J. Lilly | Marketing Genius

When you are out shopping for signs, you may cross paths with a pseudo-designer known as a “desktop publisher.” Bless their hearts – they mean well. But, they are not sign designers. The disturbing thing is, when they smell your money, they magically transform into “any kind of designer you need.”

Frankly, I’m not convinced some of the desktop publishers I’ve seen qualify as any type of “designer,” let alone a Sign Designer. Let me explain…

“Designer” implies there was some thought involved. Design is a process, not a result. Art can be anything, even accidental. Design is the polar opposite of accident.

Design implies that an expert was involved from the beginning, guiding the process and caring about the way the information was conveyed to its intended audience. That is the difference between a designer and an artist – designers serve a purpose, first. Artists never have to serve a purpose.

Form follows function.

A sign’s primary function is to communicate a message – not look pretty. Why? Because, appearance is subjective. Everybody has a different opinion of what looks nice. Sign design is judged by the objective measure of whether the message was successfully conveyed or not.

So, does that mean a sign has to be boring or ugly? Of course not. It just means you should never hire a desktop publisher to design your signage.

Do not be tricked. Some desktop publishers stretch the definition of “graphic artist” to conveniently include their ability to typeset and import clip art. Along with confusing the distinction between artist and designer, some of them even promote the myth that “it’s all pretty much the same” when referring to the different design disciplines.

Hey, I’m not sure about you, but just because its a doctor doesn’t mean its the right kind of doctor. I may have sh*t for brains, but I do not want a proctologist performing my brain surgery when they remove the crazy. You shouldn’t either. Desktop publishers for your flyers, menus and newsletters. Sign designers for your signs.

The roots of the problem

How did desktop publishers earn such a reputation? Why is sign design so different from desktop publishing?? How can we all work together to abolish bad design from public view???

Let’s start with small, baby-steps. Simple, easy to understand concepts that can help any desktop publisher design better signs.

 

This mistake traces its roots directly to Desktop Publishers. In the old days, signwriters charged by the letter. That forced customers to focus on the most important part of their message. That same focus also allowed passers-by to instantly recognize the few well-chosen words and phrases.

Of course, old-timers painted the letters by hand. So, there was a natural gatekeeper telling people how small letters could be and which words to use.

Flash-forward to today. The ability to copy, paste and print large paragraphs of text has created a lot of visual clutter in our environment.

So many people have some type of “design” app pre-installed on their computers, that virtually everybody with a computer can claim to be a designer by virtue of dragging and dropping a few pre-formed elements around their desktop. That’s how Desktop Publishers came to think they were designers. They assumed that, because they are using similar software, they must be designing. Not.

The reality is, expert sign design requires a little more thought. Not a lot. Just more than Desktop Publishers think… apparently.

Take mistake #1, for example. You cannot take all the copy from a brochure and just squish it onto a sign. That’s ridiculous. In fact, “squishing fonts” was almost a category of its own. Fonts are designed to work in their original, un-squished, state.

Brochures, menus and page layouts are all intended to be viewed at a close distance, with unlimited time to stop and evaluate the data. Most signs are meant to be processed in about two seconds.

Understand that, by squishing all of the information onto the sign, the text or other elements will become so small that none of it gets noticed. The way to reduce the number of words on your sign is easy. Here’s what to do: 1) Focus 2) Simplify 3) Prioritize.

 

This is one of the most common mistakes I seen in people new to computers, in general. They see that big ol’ list of fonts and their common sense goes right out the door, like an old couple in a muu-muu factory.

 Just because you can use a lot of fonts doesn’t mean you should.

If you need a “squished” font, download one designed to be condensed. Use nice font-families that come in a variety of widths, thicknesses and italices. Research the history of fonts on wikipedia for five minutes. Whatever you do, do not use Dom Casual or Comic Sans.

 

Borders and margins provide balance and contrast to the message written on the sign. By cramming the words all the way out to the edges, you disrupt the harmony of the signs.

Remember, the key to communicating sign messages is readability – not the arbitrary height of a letter.

Just because you think a sign should have “oh, about a three inch letter” doesn’t means all those words you want are going to fit. You have to consider the message priority, the size of the sign, the distance of the viewer and the speed at which they are travelling. If its not readable, it doesn’t matter how tall the letters are.

 

Again, another problem we didn’t have with old-school signwriters – busy backgrounds.

Just because you have a picture of a hamburger, and the customer sells hamburgers, does not mean you have to accept an ugly sign. There are about a dozen ways to make this sign (#4, above) more readable, yet include all the same elements. Maybe you can think of some. You’re probably wondering why desktop publishers don’t think of them, too.

 

This seems obvious, but some designers don’t know what a color wheel is used for. You know – complimentary colors, triads, etc. Even wonder why the NFL uniforms all look good? They use proven color science in chosing team colors. Since it only takes an extra minute, consider consulting a color wheel and a sign expert before committing to your signage colors.

If you can master these five simple concepts, we can help each other banish bad design from our environment and live more peaceful and harmonious lives. Something like that.