Updated for 2010, this guide covers how to estimate, warranties and quantity discounts, an estimate form, design and engineering fees, service and installation hourly rates, a letter footage chart, and ...
Just because you can read, doesn't mean you can read every sign
Too bad ST no longer publishes the Ugly Sign Contest, because the lowest-price-gets-the-job mentality that proliferates when the economy isn’t flourishing, especially in the sign business, often produces illegible signs. Yes, every business needs signs, but not necessarily the most expensive ones. This thinking generates poorly designed and executed signs that won‘t perform the sign’s main purpose: to transmit a message.
This month, I‘ll detour a bit from pure sign-lighting technology and focus on sign legibility. I’ll skip the ontology discussion (or, what makes a sign a sign).
Contrast and spacing
Physiology says the reading process “resembles conscious realization of all typical details of the lettering presented, and processing the content received, by comparison, with values stored in the brain to obtain a reproducible statement.” (from G. Gut’s Handbook of Luminous Advertising, 1974). Hmmm. Here’s a practical example: On a hot summer day, who’s never been thirsty after having seen a sign spelling “B-E-E-R”?
The two main parameters that affect legibility are contrast and spacing. Contrast accentuates differences between design elements. White characters on white paper, and black on black, aren’t readable. Contrast can be achieved through brightness (black on grey) or color (red on green), or a combination. So, the strongest contrast is black on yellow (Table 1). This applies to reflected light (printed matter, billboards, etc.) and illuminated signage.
The second parameter, dimensions, is even more important. The perfect human eye can distinguish two points of optimal contrast, spaced nearly 1 in. apart, at roughly 400 ft. If the points are closer, the eye assumes they’re a single object. Thus, if a sign must be readable 300 to 400 ft. away, all graphical “features” must be spaced at least 1 in. apart.
Also, the trained brain doesn’t read every word, character by character. Human beings are trained to recognize groups of six to 10 characters at once and associate the word with the best match. The brain can be easily fooled – I often miss typos repeatedly, like “Sings of the Times” instead of “Signs of the Times.”