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

[Gino]

So, we've come a long way in over 300 years.

Next week's lesson will be on "leading".

Next month will be on "spelling" That will take a long time to discuss.

 

[MJ-507]

The most common design mistake made by people on this site is taking the advice of 90% of the people in this thread. Have you ever noticed that 90% of "graphic designers" absolutely SUCK at graphic design? Have you ever noticed that 95% of "old school hand painted set lead type" graphic designers were even worse? Yes, there are some absolutely astonishing old school craftsmen out there doing museum quality work...they aren't hanging out around here any more. I look at some of the responses in this post and they are absolutely ludicrous. "Don't kern". Have you lost your damn mind? Digital font creators, even those for exceptional foundaries (Charles Borges de Oliveira excluded) half *** the kerning of letters. Not tucking an A and a W together because "we didn't do that back when polio was still a thing" is ridiculous. And the discussion over Helvetica/Arial/Minion.....REALLY? With the THOUSANDS of better, more legible, better created fonts out there you're discussing bottom feeder free stuff? There was a time the cream of the crop was on here. Design critiques could be posted and a hand full of rock stars would steer you in the right direction, show you the way, guide you along and before you know it an amazing design would come out the other end complete with the knowledge of how to get there. Now....you'll get a bunch of people telling you to add in scripts, and drop shadows, and some sparkles to make it fancy and digitally print it on the cheapest material you can get and slap it on coro to make the most profit.....and at the same time you'll get the same number of people lying to you about how they charge 10 times that for it in their market and get it and drive their Ferrari's to the shop every day while fighting off the lingerie clad women at the door.

Bravo, my friend. Bravo. Whenever my boss hires a new designer to work along with me, his main criteria for offering a position are one, do you know how to use CorelDRAW, and two, what is the lowest amount of money are you willing to work for. He doesn't understand that you get what you pay for and, as a result, has had over 15 "designers" that, in the last 10 years, crashed & burned miserably. He doesn't even request a portfolio as part of the hiring process - not that portfolios are foolproof as, one time years ago, I was reviewing a portfolio for my employer at that time who was looking to hire a jr. designer & the portfolio consisted of about 50% of work that I had designed when I worked w/ the potential new hire at a different company. I had one helluva laugh over that one. Needless to say, the clown wasn't offered the position.

 

[Stacey K]

My degree was in printing and graphic technologies, just a one year course at the local college back in the 90's. We learned about many of the things SignBrad talks about but there wasn't time to get too involved. You could focus on either design, stripping/darkroom or press operation for the second semester. I focused on design but it's not that we learned anything additional, we did real world projects for the college. It was more up to the individual to learn more than the college to teach you. The main point was to learn a skill so you could get a job in the real world and move up the ladder, most of us did get employed by a printing company. Ideally it would have been nice to do a 4 year college but would I have walked out with more skills? From what I see these days, I'm not sure.

 

[vondegroot]

There is just one other little devil we mustn't forget about; tracking!

 

[Abraxas Aguilera]

While not a design decision that's visible, it's still design... Putting 4 mounting holes, evenly spaced & in line, on letters like: O S M W
Ever see an upside down S that the installers didn't see?
These days I'm very habitual in my asymmetrical placement of mounting holes.

I now always make sure my pins for mounting are not inline with each other is at all possible. That way if we hit something inside the wall that we can't get through a bunch of pins don't hit that same obstruction.

 

[bob]

Sorry, this didn't land like I intended. The tiny /s denotes sarcasm. This was like the dumb@ss customer complaining, but worse since its coming from the sign maker.

Sorry for the misinterpretation. I thought that was a bit of crud on my screen.

 

[signbrad]

Sorry, this didn't land like I intended. The tiny /s denotes sarcasm. This was like the dumb@ss customer complaining, but worse since its coming from the sign maker.

Sarcasm is not always easy in speech, even with the advantage of voice tone and facial expression. In writing sarcasm is even more difficult.

An ex-girlfriend, a writer, would sometimes proof for me. She would say, "I know your trying to sound cute or ironical, but you didn't. You just sound mean or ignorant."
I would answer, "How can I change it?"
She would say, "See the delete key?".....which I thought was, ironically, mean. So, I ended up using smiley faces till people were sick of them.

I assumed you were being sarcastic, JBurton. You have never seemed "design stupid" in the past, so I figured you were not typographically challenged, either.
Like black ice, it's not always easy for me to see my own sarcasm fails till after it's too late. The hazards of writing.
.........................

I always enjoyed the columns of Mike Royko for his sarcasm.

Brad in Kansas City

 

[Gino]

It's only words. Read them, see if they fit or just ignore them. Who gives a flyin' fug about sarcasm ??

For a thread that's 2 years old, what's it matter anyway ??

 

[Johnny Best]

signbrad. I want to know about the "ex-girlfriend" (smiley face).

 

[signbrad]

signbrad. I want to know about the "ex-girlfriend" (smiley face).

She's still a good friend. My partner, Michelle, likes her a lot. But she doesn't work for free anymore.

 

[Johnny Best]

 

[Gino]

I think this shoulda been used......................