Discussion What's the most common design mistake you see made in sign design?

[signbrad]

Can someone please show me an example of what "kerning" is? I am new to this so I haven't heard the term yet.

In current usage, kerning simply refers to spacing between pairs of letters. In digital typesetting, graphic artists routinely adjust the spacing between letters to improve their visual appeal, as well as to improve (or sometimes to compromise) legibility.

Originally, however, in the days of printing with metal type, a kern was a notch, or mortise, cut into a piece of metal type allowing two letters to be spaced closer together. Kerns were especially important when printing letters that looked better when they overlapped, such as italicized letters.
In the beginning, kerns were cut by hand with small files. Later, saws were developed which could cut kerns quickly and accurately. Type could also be cast with built-in kerns.

Kerns were only used when letters needed to be closer together. To print letters spaced farther apart, blank type slugs could be inserted between the letters. Type foundries typically offered fonts of nothing but blank slugs in various widths to facilitate wider spacing.

Kerns took different forms, but here is a link to some pictures of common kerns. Somewhere I have saved a picture of Frederic Goudy cutting kerns with a saw, but I couldn't find it.
http://www.starshaped.com/weekendprinterblog/2018/1/27/lets-hear-it-for-the-kern

 

[jwarner]

PAPYRUS! That sh*t KILLS me

 

[Bobby H]

How does someone manage to get a job doing sign design work without knowing what "kerning" means? That's pretty basic stuff there. I guess that just shows how low the standards bar for entry has fallen in the field of sign design (or graphic design in general). Do you have a pulse and working fingers? You too can be a designer!

Photoshop is for photos - not signage.

This reminds me of a syndrome that has been going on for over 20 years: self-taught idiots passing themselves off as "professional designers" doing logo design and other graphics work all in Photoshop. I blame the rise of web development and graphics relating to it for this problem.

I've been through this situation many times: a customer will provide us with the "logo" his "professional designer" developed. It's either a JPEG, TIFF or PSD file, but pixel-based regardless. Often the design has a pixel count only appropriate for a web page. We ask if they have a vector version. Nope. Just this pixel-based junk. In conversations I've had with some of these "designers," I've concluded the problem just boils down to sheer laziness. "I do everything in Photoshop. It's what I'm comfortable with." They literally do not want to be bothered with learning how to use a vector graphics application. The trouble is they dig a big hole for their clients with such a block-headed choice.

My pet peeve is gigantic highway signs with small inline text like it is some sort of fashion statement. I'm getting older and cant see things so good. A big sign should have big text, not just a giant green box.

Are you talking about overhead or ground mounted traffic control signs on freeways? Road geeks call them "big green signs" or "BGS'es" for short. The comment about "small inline text" doesn't make a lot of sense. Can you point to a specific example (like something visible in Google Street View)? Normally the primary lettering on those signs is actually pretty large, like 14" characters or bigger. Only two type families are approved (FWHA Series Gothic and Clearview Highway), although I've seen a few signs from time to time made by subcontractors who farted out some Arial, Helvetica (Swiss 721 really) or Univers (Zurich really).

State DOT sign departments and traffic engineers are usually very picky with how they design sign packages for highway improvement projects. The plan sheets have a LOT of technical details and dimensional call-outs for everything. They even have distance tables for approved spacing between letters. Still, some design atrocities can happen. Oklahoma has some embarrassing examples (I can point to a few right here in Lawton).

Now, I've seen some really huge green "APL" (arrow per lane) freeway signs and other diagrammatic signs. The giant amount of green negative space is usually there for the arrows. I think it's pretty rare to see an overly large green sign that has nothing more than a highway route shield and control city listed. If anything, the bigger problem is green signs that are too small for the amount of copy they contain. TX DOT usually does a good job with their highway signs, but I've seen a decent number of green signs where the panel was a bit too small. Obviously some cost cutting was taking place.

In the past California was well known for its big freeways (today more impressive projects are happening in Texas, Arizona, Northern VA, etc). California's freeway signs SUCK. They are often very ugly and routinely have all sorts of patch-job garbage on them.

 

[Gino]

Is it hurting anyone by me asking here? The topic has already been brought up here so that's why I asked. Would it have killed you to explain it to me rather than being negative towards me? I did try to search google for it but since I have never even heard of it I didn't know which one to look for because I saw kerning for a few different things.

Where in the world was I negative towards you ?? You'd get better results asking your own questions in your own threads then asking for explanations on terms you don't know in a thread complaining about the very people asking the same question YOU just asked. I thought I was being helpful. Guess not.

Let me ask you.... did you google K E R N or K E R N I N G and not understand it or just didn't bother reading and trying to figure it out ?? Cause Signbrad just said the same thing google did. Does that help ??​

 

[Stacey K]

Ba d kerni ng driv es me nut s!

 

[Jeremiah]

Some might think that asking a question here is good
To me it's fantastic that we All have a place to bounce questions and ideas around. We all learn as we work. Some experts took out student loans or government loans to get where they are today and stay there. Some never paid the loans back. However we learned the training , we are all self taught if we think about it. Depend on yourself and the support of real friends. Years ago my competition became my good friend , then he soon had so many credit problems he closed shop. I never judged him and wish he would have asked more questions while he could have.

 

[Andy D]

Can someone please show me an example of what "kerning" is? I am new to this so I haven't heard the term yet.

examples of bad kerning:

 

[Andy D]

The images above show obvious bad kerning, but then it gets to a point where it's personal preference.
In the image below shows some kerning issues, but the third one down that they say is "more visually appealing"
IMHO still has too much space between the "WAT", the bottom one is my adjustment.

 

[Bobby H]

The "Massage Therapist" one reminded me of a "Celebrity Jeopardy" skit in SNL where the comedian playing Sean Connery picked the category "therapists," calling it "the rapists."

we are all self taught if we think about it

Some of us here have formal training in illustration, graphic design, etc. I learned the very old school methods of manual graphic design -getting a rush from the rubber cement used to paste all kinds of items to a camera ready art board. People who have only done graphic design from within a computer don't know how easy they have it. The same even goes for sign design and the "analog" methods very few people use anymore.

Even though I learned all the technical things about page layout, composition, color theory, typography, etc and the more important, cerebral "visual communication" stuff, there was lot of things I had to throw out in regard to sign design. There is a great deal of stuff in this field they rarely ever teach in four year art schools. Most of the curriculum is centered on the printed page, with video production and web development following closely behind. The nearest they get to our field is in things like "environmental graphic design," which translates to things like sign systems for a campus home to a hospital, school or big company.

Still, I will say someone armed with formal design training, a decent portfolio of work examples and competent skill in mainstream graphics applications will get up to speed in a sign shop a lot faster than someone who only clicked around in some design software he got off the net. In either scenario the bigger challenge these days is just finding people who are reliable and show up for work on a dependable basis.

 

[peerlessdani]

examples of bad kerning:

OMG yes , this is what I kind of thought it was, thank you!

 

[peerlessdani]

In current usage, kerning simply refers to spacing between pairs of letters. In digital typesetting, graphic artists routinely adjust the spacing between letters to improve their visual appeal, as well as to improve (or sometimes to compromise) legibility.

Originally, however, in the days of printing with metal type, a kern was a notch, or mortise, cut into a piece of metal type allowing two letters to be spaced closer together. Kerns were especially important when printing letters that looked better when they overlapped, such as italicized letters.
In the beginning, kerns were cut by hand with small files. Later, saws were developed which could cut kerns quickly and accurately. Type could also be cast with built-in kerns.

Kerns were only used when letters needed to be closer together. To print letters spaced farther apart, blank type slugs could be inserted between the letters. Type foundries typically offered fonts of nothing but blank slugs in various widths to facilitate wider spacing.

Kerns took different forms, but here is a link to some pictures of common kerns. Somewhere I have saved a picture of Frederic Goudy cutting kerns with a saw, but I couldn't find it.
http://www.starshaped.com/weekendprinterblog/2018/1/27/lets-hear-it-for-the-kern

Thank you!

 

[shoresigns]

Most of our clients seem to use graphic designers that only know how to make things look good online.

We frequently get files without outlined fonts, colours way out of CMYK gamut, thousands of clipping masks and so on.
The amount of time we spend on cleanup would sometimes compare to a complete re-design from scratch.

I completely disagree. It's the printer's job to know how printing works, not the client's graphic designer. Print shops shouldn't need to make clients produce files to a spec. If you have a competent designer or prepress operator, they should have no problem dealing with all the examples you mentioned.

The downvotes I got for this, plus Bobby H's response that has nothing to do with my comments, are making me wonder if I didn't explain myself clearly.

I get annoyed by clients sending poorly built PDF files just as much as anyone here, but that doesn't change the fact that it's the printer's job to fix the problems, most of the time. You're all insane if you kick files back to clients for little things like RGB colours and live text, or clipping masks. PDF files are very complex and there are a wide range of common problems when we get files from clients, but I'm not about to teach every client how to be a pre-press operator. And I'm sure not going to delay jobs by going back and forth with the client's designer to fix things that take me 30 seconds to do.

In no way am I saying that graphic designers shouldn't learn these things, too. It's helpful for a designer to learn how printing works, but for a printer, it's your job to deal with people who don't know how printing works. It's OK to vent a little, but remember you're complaining about how someone didn't do your job. It makes you sound incompetent.

 

[JetPress]

We charge design/set up time if I have to go in there and start fixing a file. Sometimes its a quick 5 mins, sometimes it can be 30 minutes. We tell our customers up front that if they are having a designer making the file they need to follow the guidelines. We do hand them cards that has instructions that I think a graphic designer should understand.

 

[Bobby H]

The downvotes I got for this, plus Bobby H's response that has nothing to do with my comments, are making me wonder if I didn't explain myself clearly.

Your comment was pretty clear. And pretty absurd, IMHO.

My response to you earlier did address your comment plus explain why we get art files not ready for prime time so frequently. We have this giant number of talent-lacking, self-taught, wannabe "graphic designers" out there pumping out all kinds of problematic trash artwork. They're doing this stuff as a side hustle or just to stroke their egos so they can say they're "artists." It's pretty annoying to have to burn up time dealing with their files rather than doing something more productive.

I get annoyed by clients sending poorly built PDF files just as much as anyone here, but that doesn't change the fact that it's the printer's job to fix the problems, most of the time. You're all insane if you kick files back to clients for little things like RGB colours and live text, or clipping masks. PDF files are very complex and there are a wide range of common problems when we get files from clients, but I'm not about to teach every client how to be a pre-press operator. And I'm sure not going to delay jobs by going back and forth with the client's designer to fix things that take me 30 seconds to do.

First, SignMeUpGraphics didn't say anything about PDF files. You just inserted that yourself.

Not all clients send PDFs, much less PDFs that are actually work-able. It's a rare event that I receive customer provided artwork as a PDF generated from Adobe Illustrator with Illustrator editing capability left intact. More often it's something I have to run through Astute Graphics' Vector First Aid plug-in to eliminate at least some of the art repair drudgery.

We get plenty of customer provided files in other formats. A low resolution JPEG image is the most common. There's not too much you can do with those. So we absolutely will ask the client if they have something better, preferably a vector-based art file. Sometimes they can provide that. When clients send "art files" to us they usually just grab the very first "logo" thing they find in their computer without bothering to think about details such as the file format. If they insist we use the dopey JPEG we'll give them a choice. Pay X dollars per hour for it to be re-built in vector format or have the low res JPEG printed as is, warts and all.

Live text is only not a problem if the client sent a PDF with font data embedded. If it's any other kind of file we may have to kick it back to the client and ask them to have their "designer" convert the live fonts to outlines. We have a pretty good collection of fonts. But we don't have everything. Just a couple days ago I had to ask a client to send another version of their Illustrator artwork because it had live fonts I didn't have.

The RGB vs CMYK thing is very basic stuff that gets amateurs in trouble and sometimes gets us in conflict with the client. Their "logo" is their precious creation. So they want us to reproduce the thing as faithfully as possible. Sometimes that even includes impossible demands of matching their way out of gamut range RGB colors, like the client I talked about on the previous page. Thankfully most customers are pretty reasonable and willing to pick a Pantone color out of a swatch guide or a stock vinyl color.

 

[Andy D]

In no way am I saying that graphic designers shouldn't learn these things, too. It's helpful for a designer to learn how printing works, but for a printer, it's your job to deal with people who don't know how printing works. It's OK to vent a little, but remember you're complaining about how someone didn't do your job. It makes you sound incompetent.

For me it's pretty simple, a company will get wholesale pricing if they are able to follow a few simple directions to make their files print ready,
if they can't they don't.

 

[Tim Garner]

PAPYRUS! That sh*t KILLS me

I had a customer make me swap out a font for Papyrus 25 years ago and that sign is still up. Every time I drive by it I wonder how he managed to stay in business all this time because it's acrylic push through and you can't read it for sh*t.

 

[Lindsey]

Can someone please show me an example of what "kerning" is? I am new to this so I haven't heard the term yet.

Kerning is the amount of space between letters in a given word. Sometimes the letters are "kerned tightly" (close together). Sometimes they are "kerned loosely" (further apart).

 

[Lindsey]

Clutter and too much info bothers me. Multiple phone numbers are my peeve. Really, a phone number is likely not needed at all (unless you're a pizza place or a phone hot-line)

Lack of style and lack of bold design choices is also a bummer. Lot's of boring signs around my town.

Keep it simple. Cut to the point & throw in some style.

 

[visual800]

a little off topic I LOVE IT when a client sends us crappy jpeg art and we set it up as vector for a quote and they go with someone else BUT needs the art we redid cause the new sign dude cant do it! Yes, for $50 I cna send you the vector version and then they get a little torqued off

 

[John Miller]

Two of my pet peeves are contrast and vibrating colors... "I know, I'l put blue and black lettering on this red van" I've seen dozens of signs with black letters on a red background. The thing is, on the computer monitor that choice doesn't seem as bad as it actually is because viewing color on the screen is seeing emitted light vs color that is from reflected light in the field.