How Big Should the Sign Be?

The most common problem with signage is not the design. It is that the text is too small to read from where people actually are. There is a rule of thumb for this and it is worth thirty seconds.

The rule

One inch of letter height for every 10 feet of viewing distance is the minimum to be legible. For something you want people to read comfortably while moving — traffic, a busy sidewalk — use one inch per 5 feet.

Work backwards from that. If your banner needs to be read from across a parking lot at about 100 feet, your headline needs 10 inch letters — which sets the size of the banner far more than any aesthetic decision.

Fewer words, bigger words

The instinct is to fit everything on. Resist it. A sign read at distance gets about three seconds and roughly seven words. Name, one offer, one way to respond. Everything else belongs on your website, and the phone number only needs to be there if you actually want calls.

Standard sizes, and why they matter

Yard signs are 18" × 24" or 12" × 18" because that is what fits standard H-stakes and what the material yields efficiently. Banners are cut to any size up to 120" × 120", but common sizes exist for a reason:

• 2' × 4' — indoor, behind a table, event signage
• 3' × 6' — the workhorse. Fence, building front, grand opening
• 4' × 8' — road frontage, read from a moving car
• 3' × 8'+ in mesh — anything on a fence in an exposed spot

Wind is the thing people forget

A solid vinyl banner on a fence is a sail. In an exposed position it will either tear or take the fence with it. Two fixes: mesh, which lets wind through, or wind slits cut into solid vinyl. Both are cheap and both are much cheaper than replacing the banner in March.

Material, briefly

13 oz vinyl is the standard and it is fine for most jobs. 15 oz is heavier with better opacity — worth it if light behind the banner is washing out your colors. 18 oz is for long-term outdoor and high wind, and it is the only material we print double-sided, because the lighter ones show through. Mesh is for fences.

Double-sided, or two banners?

If people approach from both directions, double-sided 18 oz is one banner priced at $9.00 a square foot. If the two sides are in genuinely different places, two single-sided banners at $4.50 are usually cheaper. Worth thinking about for thirty seconds before you order.