During the past 20 years, the three primary lighting sources for signs have been fluorescent, neon and LEDs, but the relative ratio of each type has drastically changed. The industry trade journal, Signs of the Times, has tracked these changes over time via industry surveys. The most recent such survey was published in ST‘s March 2015 […]
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Will GPS Make Signs Obsolete?
In 2008, a satellite-navigation specialist, Colin Beatty, presented a 27-slide PowerPoint presentation to the Sign Design Society, England’s leading environmental graphic design association. He asked the rhetorical question in his title:. “Could personal navigation systems herald the demise of much fixed signage?” In a column published in The Slate, author Julia Turner explores this question […]
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FASI Executive Director Wade Swormstedt Named AACSRE “Friend”
FASI Executive Director Wade Swormstedt has been named a “Friend of AACSRE” (The Academic Advisory Council for Signage Research & Education). The AACSRE Board of Directors includes 13 representatives from its university members. In addition, AACSRE appoints “Friends” to serve in an advisory capacity. In a press release, AACSRE stated, “With the interdisciplinary nature of […]
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Penn State Study Examines Font Legibility
The Larson Transportation Institute at Penn State University conducted a study on font legibility through a grant from Gemini Inc. (Cannon Falls, MN), a manufacturer of dimensional letters. The following is the Executive Summary from the report. For information about the full report, contact Philip Garvey at [email protected]. Background and objectives The enormous font selection […]
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Villanova Study Examines Value of Illuminated On-premise Signs
Professor Charles R. Taylor, a marketing professor at Villanova University, and a Research Fellow at the Center for Marketing and Policy Research, conducted a survey of business owners as to the value of illumination for their on-premise signs. Surveys were sent to 750 business owners, and 333 useable responses were received. Here are some of […]
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What the Street Graphics Books Say About Signs
In 1971, the American Planning Association (APA) began distributing a book called Street Graphics and the Law, which was authored by Daniel Mandelker and William Ewald. It recommended the uncompensated taking of signs and governmental control of signs’ design, message and content. The authors stated that their conclusions were substantially based on 1956 research conducted […]
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What are Some Guidelines for Electronic Message Center Resolution?
A critical aspect of any sign is viewing distance. The appropriate amount of detail varies greatly, depending on the distance from which the sign will be viewed. In digital printing, this “resolution” is determined by “dots per inch,” or DPI. The more closely an image will be viewed, the higher its resolution needs to be, […]
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Can a Changeable-copy Sign Help a Business?
A car wash in California had a two-color, freestanding, rectangular ground sign. It replaced it with a sign of the same proportion, which constituted a multi-color, dimensional cabinet sign on a pole, with a manual, changeable-copy sign below it. The sign cost $15,000. In the first year after the new sign was installed, gross revenue […]
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How Did One Car Dealer Succeed When Three Others had Failed?
Melvin Tuchez worked as an employee in the auto-sales business, and then he purchased his own dealership, Aztec Motors, in San Fernando, California. He believed three other auto-sales companies on the same site had failed due to inferior branding and weak management. He immediately began spending $16,000 per month on print and on-air advertising. A […]
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How Does an Angled Sign’s Effectiveness Compare to a Parallel Sign?
The difference in conspicuity for parallel and perpendicular signs has been calculated by Penn State research, along with the requisite minimum sizes for the letters of each. But what if the local sign code won’t allow a bigger sign, and not enough projection length for a legible perpendicular sign? Would a sign with at least […]
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