The exercise of power to regulate signs is not unlimited. This comprehensive look at the case law relating to signs. Download Cases on Sign Law.
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What’s Your Signage? (2004)
How On-Premise Signs Help Small Businesses Tap into a Hidden Profit Center A handbook developed by The New York State Small Business Development Center and the Signage Foundation for Communications Excellence. Download What’s Your Signage?
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Fundamental Color Theory
How to enhance sign design with color The following article originally appeared in the April 1998 issue of Signs of the Times magazine. By Mark Baty and Jennifer Flinchpaugh For most artists, their first active experience with color was scribbling between the black lines in a coloring book with their favorite colored crayon. As our […]
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Establishing the Worth of an On-Premise Sign
How to apply the market-comparison and cost-of-replacement valuation methods to an on-premise sign This article originally appeared in the October 1999 issue of Signs of the Times magazine. By Dr. R. James Claus and Thomas A. Claus In last month’s column, we examined a car wash’s new, $15,000 pole sign and began assessing its economic […]
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National Academies’ Nighttime Overhead Signage Luminance Levels
The National Academies Press issued an 80-page report, in May 2017, entitled “Guidelines for Nighttime Overhead Sign Visibility.” It includes a chart headlined “Luminance Levels for Overhead Signs.” It lists five different visual complexity levels, ranging from a dark rural area to a commercial downtown district. It then suggests minimum luminance levels in terms of candelas per square foot and […]
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Texas/Pennsylvania DOT Studies Says Clearview Font Improves Sign Legibility
A study conducted jointly by the Texas and Pennsylvania Departments of Transportation in April 2006 concluded the Clearview font increased the visibility distance for drives by 12% versus the existing Series E Modified font. In 1994, the Federal Highway Administration determined highway signs were no longer visible enough for a population that included older drivers. Over the next […]
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Should Signs be Regulated as Lighting Devices?
The answer is a very clear “no.” An article by FASI President/Executive Director Bill Dundas published in the January 2016 issue of Signs of the Times magazine explains that electric signs are not lighting devices, per se. Their purpose is not to provide light, but to deliver messages. Thus, they should not be regulated as […]
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FASI Board Member Weinstein Speaks at National Planning Conference
Alan Weinstein, an acknowledged expert on planning, who holds a joint faculty appointment at Cleveland State University’s Cleveland-Marshall College of Law and Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs, and also serves as director of the colleges’ Law & Public Policy Program, will speak at two separate sessions at the 2017 American Planning Association’s National […]
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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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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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