We’re not all fortunate enough to have an eye for art in design and color selection. The content and colors used in signage will greatly affect your sign’s ability to be noticed, and its ability to convey your message. In this week’s article, we present some tips to help you in designing your next sign, poster or other types of visual communication.
A sign that is visually appealing has a greater potential of attracting the attention of prospective customers. Conversely, a poorly designed graphic may cause potential customers to question your company’s values. Even if the poor design draws attention, it’s likely not the type of attention that increases business. If your business has anything to do with design or marketing, a poor design tells customers to avoid using your services.
Being in the industry, we frequently see mistakes others have made in trying to convey a message. These mistakes can easily be avoided by consulting a professional in the industry. We recommend doing so before your project is well underway as momentum and possible cost overruns may otherwise override sound advice.
Keep It Simple
No one is going to read a chapter, or even a paragraph to learn about your company. Keep the message simple, and enhance with photos or graphics that both grab attention and support your message visually.
Contrast and Color Selection
At all points in the design process, the two most important considerations are appearance and legibility. Appearance refers to visual appeal, the ability to grab the attention of prospective customers. Legibility refers to the ability to convey a message to the intended audience once you’ve captured their attention.
The colors you chose should be kept at a minimum unless there’s a very strong argument for adding more color. When considering color combinations, a number of reference materials are readily available that will help you chose colors that will increase contrast. Increasing contrast increases legibility. Among other design aids, our website includes reference materials that encapsulate studies on comparative visibility of color combinations: color contrast chart
Choosing colors that complement each other aesthetically is a bit more challenging. Some would argue that choosing complementary colors is largely subjective. Many of us (including the author of this article) lack the creative artistic talent to be able to visualize a finished design in full color, then migrate that vision to a finished design. We may know what is appealing when we see it, but unable to create on the fly. For those of us so challenged, there are tools that help in the creative process. One such tools is Adobe’s Kuler. Kuler is both a community and an application / tool. You can browse color combinations that others have created as an aid in the visualization process. Alternatively, you can create your own color combinations in Kuler. The Kuler application presents a color wheel and allows you to select from a number of harmony rules to present colors that complement each other based on the selected rule. A simple interface (sample screen below) makes Kuler easy to use.
Since there’s no cost to use Adobe’s Kuler, there’s little reason not to give it a try.