1. What's Your Point?
What do you want to achieve with your sign? Is it to make your branding visible to potential clients? Is it to convey a message regarding your company? Maybe to display your company's contact information? Once you decide what you want to relay to the public with a particular piece of signage, focus on that...and then keep it simple. Consumers have very short attention spans, and for good reason. They are bombarded with images and messages and text and color from all sides...at trade shows, on city streets, even in traffic with bumper stickers and window decals. They have a lot to look at. And if you give them too much to look at in one single sign, the chances are excellent that they'll become visually overwhelmed and move on. They don't have to think about simple signage. It's immediately understood and your message is relayed. Which means it's more likely to be retained.
2. The Color of Money
No, we don't think all of your signs should be green. But there is something to consider when it comes to color choices for your signage and how effective it will be in gaining new customers. If you haven't heard of or thought about the color wheel theory, it can be a great resource for helping you choose a color palette for your signage. If you're looking for maximum impact with your signage, you might want to design your artwork using complementary colors, which means colors that appear directly across from one another on the color wheel. Complementary colors are those that provide maximum visual contrast, which help the eye focus easily on different aspects of your design. Other color combinations can certainly be effective, as well. I'm not suggesting that a sign isn't going to work unless it's using complementary colors. But I'm going to revisit my previous "keep it simple" message. Just as one's eye has a hard time processing too much information in the form of images or text on signage, too many colors can be visually confusing and can cause potential customers to turn away.
While we're talking about color, there's another point to keep in mind. Images should be submitted for production in CMYK color mode. Most cameras capture images and save files in RGB color mode, and when it comes time for our printer to communicate with that image, because our printers "speak" CMYK, the translation of colors might not come across as what you see in your image on your computer screen. It really is like two languages, and while some of the information might be understood by the printer, some of the message is invariably different than what's intended. But if you convert your images to CMYK mode before you upload them for production, what you see is what you'll get.
3. A Picture Is Worth 300 Words.
Ok, so I downgraded the word value there. But that's because I wanted the number 300 to stick in your mind. If you are ordering signs and submitting .jpegs and text for our designers to work with in creating your signage, the larger the resolution of the photo, the better. Images on digital photos are actually made with thousands of little dots called pixels. If a photo has, say, 72 dpi (dots per inch), it may look great on your computer or camera screen. But if you want that photo enlarged to a size that would be easily visible on a banner or A-Frame sign, those 72 dots per inch will be spread apart significantly, resulting in your image looking grainy or blurry. If instead, you resize your photo so that it has a resolution of 120-300 dpi, the dots are much more concentrated within the same amount of space. This means that we can enlarge your image significantly, and though the dots will still spread out somewhat, the effect is not as visible to the naked eye because there are so many of them. And your picture will look fantastic on your sign. Just remember...less dots, less impact. More dots, more impact. Here is a great resource for image sizing on our sister site, PDX Displays.
4. File This Under "Success".
If you've already designed your artwork and are just ready to have it produced, we can do so with the shortest amount of time if you submit .eps files and your text is outlined. Illustrator files are much easier for our printers to interpret, but we can also work with Adobe .pdf files. .Jpeg files of finished artwork may prove difficult because sometimes the text or images are not conveyed effectively, which results in your artwork appearing differently than you designed. So whenever possible, .eps or.ai files with traced outlines are the fastest and simplest ways to go.
So there you have it! Great signs are within your reach, and Arrowhead Signs is ready with personalized attention and 24 years of experience to create them for you. If you have any questions regarding your sign design or the ordering process, please call us at 503-305-7148 or email at sales@arrowheadsigns.com. Dan, Stephanie or Gillian are happy to help!
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