Signs that Work

“Brightly polished metal acts like a mirror: It reflects whatever is around it.”— Light, Science and Magic: An introduction to Photographic Lighting, by Fil Hunter & Paul Fuqua.

From that we might postulate, “a polished finish is taboo for lettering intended to be read. Polished finishes are okay for decorative elements.”

A specification tweak that would have made this sign work is swapping the letter and background finishes. Better, just eliminate polished altogether. Because no matter from which direction you approach the sign, it’s a complicated environment that gets reflected in random and unpredictable ways.

Make no mistake. Subtlety is good. In the right circumstance.

A building address isn’t one of them.

Tone-on-tone solutions often furnish an effect similar to a chameleon. It’s as though the characters took on the appearance of the background it occupies.

Un-pictured is a variant of chameleon effect that is more akin to a chameleon. Because the sign starts out with a finish unlike the background that supports it. It occurs when a polished finish sign is positioned on a wall of a given tone that is opposite a wall of the same tone. It’s not only chameleon-like, it’s also strikingly similar in appearance to the outer space creature using advanced cloaking technology in the old action hit, Predator.

The specification tweak for sign types that must be seen and read is, "just say no to tone-on-tone."

Satin-finished stainless steel can look the bomb, unless it’s the wrong kind of bomb, stemming from surroundings that fail to enrich it.

The reflective nature of all satin-finished metals are highly sensitive to light (or lack of it).

What’s believed to have occurred is a dark metal ceiling reflected in the sign — a sign that is further knee-capped by being tone-on-tone metal. There isn't one iota of in-built contrast that might have helped the entirety to be easily read.

We don’t doubt that the design drawing depicting the sign made it look amazing before the actual sign materialized on site.

The specification tweak that could have helped (assuming inability to directly illuminate the sign) is switching to painted metals that could have approximated the design direction while supporting the ability to be seen and read.

White vinyl appliqué letters are wonderful for store windows. Because white lettering contrasts so well with windows appearing dark much of the daytime. Take a look at stores across your street. You’ll start noticing this phenomenon of darkness in store windows.

Trouble occurs when your store interior sports a large white element near the window. The sign winds up legible part of the time, depending upon where you’re standing in proximity to it.

The specification tweak that would have made all the difference is addition of a dark outline on all the lettering. The sign would have been fully visible regardless the white column. And same, if and when their white vertical blinds were drawn closed.

We see a fair share of exterior signs with part-time legibility imposed by the sun.

There are parts of the day when shadows are nil, but those parts of day happen to be when foot and street traffic is low. All someone can hope for are cloudy days allowing the sign to be easily read all day.

Whenever we’ve seen artists depict floating letters in a rendering, it’s never drawn to appear sticking way out there.

The depicted letters are mounted on conspicuously long pins. Some feel pins are ideally used at short length and only on letters that effectively conceal the pins, creating a mysterious and subtle floating effect.

You don’t need to project all that much to achieve depth in this kind of sunlight. Witness the amount of shadow created by the background plaque.

The specification tweak to bolster full-time legibility in this case would have been to lose the pins.

This a mighty effort that happened to have turned out counterproductive.

Getting illuminated letters up there with no apparent attachment or background took a lot of planning.

This sign can only have been green-lit to furnish if the rendering of it appeared clearly legible.

If your store brand is not internationally known and you bought a similar sign, you might be unlikely to have any attention paid to deciphering what your sign reads. It will just go ignored.

The specification tweak in this case would haven been to apply matte black vinyl to the glass right behind the sign, so that it prevents rearward light reflections from complicating matters. Black vinyl is not the penalty one might think, because the glass is dark to begin with; it appears to be in front of a support beam at that spot, and the resulting strong, legible message is what will be immediately apparent.

We love creative ideas, along with a client who is daring enough to let you go ahead with it. Some creative ideas come with a price to pay. In this case, it’s directionally-dependent legibility.

This is the first time we’ve seen this kind of limitation.

There could have been a financial incentive. The building only needed one sign instead of two. But more than likely, the incentive was an expression of wit.

The case is made for demonstration purposes. No specification tweak. They knew exactly what they were doing and they got their anticipated result.

Good design helps you appear credible. Absence of design helps you appear incredible. (In a bad way).

In our opinion, the confidence this sign inspires is the possibility that they’ll have folded and moved on when you return to pick up the car you’ve placed a deposit on.

Specification tweak: You can save a buck and use the same shape and method. Just replace the sign panel with one bearing relevent typography and a strong layout. Hire a graphic designer with the chops to do a number on it. Your ideal customer will register a positive impression correlating your product with your sign.

Designing signs for an internationally-known monument must come with it the impetus to do something impressive. For some, it’s expressed in real glass and real stainless steel.

But if that’s the direction, isn’t it incumbent at the design stage to specify an attachment method that will work? Answer: Yes.

A fixing that is unplanned leaves a sign ill-equipped to be among the public at large. Especially a public at perpetual high-capacity in a portion of the venue that is as well-traveled as any born of human necessity.

Can you envision the weight of the glass and solid stainless steel bearing down on a single row of screws or studs? Because that’s what appears to be happening here. Not so bad if the walls were in granite or marble. But in this case, the hardware is penetrating drywall, with a makeup that can crumble around hardware when some lateral stress is placed upon it.

Specification tweak: At the very least, stagger the hardware. Go one better, make sure that solid wood blocking has been concealed in the spot where the restroom signs go.

There’s been instances of vinyl adhesive failing to stick to surfaces, but that’s not what appears to have happened here.

In cases where signs are subject to touching and fiddling with, consider using a more permanent means of making the sign. Even if it costs a little bit more to do.

Although the solution in this case would have cost a lot more if done at the time this photo was taken. This photo was shot before the advent of digital printing.

Yet, digital printing is not a panacea, because it, too, can be harmed, besides the fact that digital printings external “shelf life” isn’t all that long. So a replacement would be necessary at some point.

The cool, but costly, means would have been to acid-etch the lettering into metal and then have it mechanically rolled to the column’s contour.

Heavily deteriorated signs are useful in one case: depicting urban wasteland in post-apocalyptic movies.

Your facilities’ signs needn’t be depicted as such (unless it’s lucky enough to be spotted in the local theater).

Donning the archaeologist’s hat, there’s an appearance of rust in the ruled lines interpreted in extruded metal, which could be steel bar. Extruded aluminum bar is a superior alternative. The peeling paint almost appears as though it was a coating added to refresh already deteriorating paint.

The specification tweak in this case includes using aluminum as the base material, in both sheet and bar. Then using a 2-part acrylic polyurethane paint coating over zinc chromate primer.

The result will be a colorfast coating that’s aircraft quality, with exceptional UV resistance and scratch resistance.