I’m amazed day by day I drive down the road and take a look at the identical outdoor promoting graphic design mistakes repeated time and again. Business owners attempting to make a living with a street-side presence that barley commands attention.
There are two scenarios that I see regularly.
- A possible customer walks right into a custom sign shop and indicates their budget. The sign shop owner is weak, afraid of losing a possible sale, so he delivers an indication product designed to suit the proposed cost. With some easy education style selling the sign shop could have sold a product that might have made extra money, for his shop, and the client.
- (*10*) customer walks into the sign shop with a layout, or design concept that stinks. Again, fear of losing the client causes the sign manufacturer to deliver the useless sign. Money down the drain.
Here are some key design elements that I actually have learned over 15 years within the outdoor promoting industry.
-
1. Remember that potential customers of all backgrounds and ages are your online business from a moving vehicle, in traffic, day and night. They must have the opportunity to see and browse your outdoor promoting easily. Don’t try and sell them with information on the sign – save that information until they’re in your online business.
2. The correct design and layout of your sign is critical to its effectiveness. Crowding the sign with an excessive amount of text makes it inconceivable to read from a automobile, or at a distance. Therefore, the less words the higher. Use the age-old adage – K.I.S.S. method – Keep It Simple, Son.
3. Understand the concept of “First Read.” There must be a focus positioned on the sign that can have impact and command attention. Ideally, the primary read should incorporate Branding elements like a big graphic, or your organization logo.
4. Your sign is your “first impression” with the mobile market, and first impressions are lasting impressions. Your outdoor promoting must project the positive image you would like the general public to have of your online business. Potential customers will judge the inside your online business by the way it looks on the skin.
5. Many owners mistakenly consider an indication as merely a tool that identifies the business. What they fail to comprehend is that over half of all recent retail sales are a results of impulse buys. People see, shop and buy. If your outdoor promoting is ineffective, it should cost rather more in lost sales then all the cost of a superb sign.
6. Your outdoor promoting will need to have visual impact. It must make your services or products, and your location, easy to recollect.
7. Make sure the colours are utilized in contrasting patterns. Green on blue is just not readable, whereas black on white is incredibly visible.
8. If you’ve got several colours in a graphic, avoid multi-coloured lines of text or words (they may compete with the colours in your graphic). Black text is healthier.
9. Ideally, the design and the colours of your location or constructing should reinforce the design and colours of your sign (or vice versa). Color might be the best and most cost-effective device for this coordination of design for business identification.
10. “White-space”. This is the surface area of an indication’s face that’s left uncovered by either text or graphics. The proper amount of white-space is just as vital for quick readability as are graphics, text and colours. In fact, 30% to 40% of the sign’s face area must be left as white-space for optimal readability.
© 2007 RightNow Communications
