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Focus on Fonts and Capitalization
One of the most important decisions you have to make when creating signs is which font to use. After all, if people can’t easily read your sign, you’ve messed up.
The process of choosing a font can be mind-boggling…but here are a few tips:
A serif font has “notches” at the end of each word (like this one—Times New Roman)—while a sans serif font does not (like Arial). The general rule of thumb is that serif fonts should be used for copy, while sans serif fonts are best for headings.
Many signs consist of headings, so using a sans serif font is a good choice. For instance:
VOTE TODAY UNTIL 8 PM
That font is Arial. It’s clean and easily readable, a stark contrast to the following:
VOTE TODAY UNTIL 8 PM
That font is Times. Since it’s a serif font, it’s “busier” than Atial or other sans serif fonts, and as a result lacks the same impact.
All caps or sentence case?
Equally important as making a good font choice is choosing between using all caps or sentence case (when just the first word is capitalized). Consider the following:
There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to sign capitalization, but the more copy a sign contains, the less likely you should capitalize all the letters. Again, it’s about readability. For instance, our example above has three words plus a time, so it’s fine to capitalize everything, but see what happens when you start adding copy:
VOTE TODAY UNTIL 8 PM
EXERCISE YOUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT
MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD
PLEASE HAVE A PHOTO ID READY
All those capital letters are a bit jarring. This reads better:
VOTE TODAY UNTIL 8 PM
Exercise your constitutional right
Make your voice heard
Please have a photo ID ready
You can also choose to keep the sans serif font for the heading and use a serif font for the copy:
VOTE TODAY UNTIL 8 PM
Exercise your constitutional right
Make your voice heard
Please have a photo ID ready
What’s the takeaway here? Don’t overlook the importance of fonts and capitalization when designing signs. Those of us who make signs for a living can certainly assist you with making good decisions, since you don’t want your compelling copy to lose impact due to using a less-than-ideal font or making a poor capitalization choice.
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