phototec
New Member
First, when I read “beveled look”, I thought you were referring to the outline being beveled. There was recently a lengthy discussion on another forum regarding the name of the letter style you displayed. I have known that to be called a convex letter.
I am a big fan and use convex letter styles often. That was not the look they wanted.
I don’t want to pick apart your portfolio. I too have been ridiculed here over customer dictated artwork.
I do however, want to offer some constructive criticisms. The following comments are based on the two samples you posted here.
I realize it is ultimately about taste and what appeals to you, as having been mentioned in this thread already. The general rule of thumb I follow, is when highlighting or shadowing fonts and such, the natural light source comes from the top. Both of your samples convey a light source from the bottom and for my taste that is “naturally” wrong.
There is a guy in my area that is constantly using a convex font with either a shadow or outline / shadow combo where the light source for the letter is from the bottom while the light source for the shadow is from the top. This in my book is just wrong. I realize it can be a rookie mistake but this guy is no rookie. He either doesn’t care or based on other work he does, doesn’t understand good layouts and doesn’t have the where with all to know or execute simple basics when designing.
Back to your thoughts on this design needing to be” fancied up” with 3-D looks or gradient fills; as I mentioned, I don’t have to look too far to find examples of what you are talking about and most are overdone and / or illegible.
For the most part I have built a reputation on providing clean legible layouts . . . I’ll just keep doing that.
Jeff - You are 100% right on the light should be coming from the top, I learned that in art class back in the 60's, anyway, back on subject of the convex fonts, I remember a while back you presented some work you had done, and if my memory serves me right, one was the rear window of your truck. And some of that work had convex fonts and it looked great and we all thought it was printed, but NO, you said you made the sign with layered cut vinyl, it had many layers, I was impressed. Do you remember those posted graphics?
Anyway, I remember they were great and could not believe they were cut vinyl.....oh, as I stated before, the police car looked great...
