Talking Sign Design With The Wyoming Youth Services Bureau

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of speaking to a small group of youth and leaders with the Wyoming (Ohio) Youth Services Bureau (WYSB) about graphic design, branding, and sign design.

The WYSB was asked to create a sign to be displayed every Tuesday when the Wyoming Farmers’ Market is in full swing. The WYSB asked us to offer advice on the design of the sign, and also talk about graphic design / branding.

We met with a small group to show projects from our past and present, and then present 4 guides for making an effective sign.

In order for the youth in attendance to take me seriously, I showed some of my work from past design firms that they could find in their local Wal-Mart, Lowe’s Home Improvement, and Biggs stores. I then showed several projects that D&A Design has been working on over the past 4-6 months.

The show-and-tell provided at least a little credibility for my 4 guides for effective sign design. The 4 guides were as follows:

1. Me.  The first thing I covered was that graphic design is not about “me.” When someone creates artwork that expresses how they feel, or a message they want to convey, that is their artwork. Design, however, is when we express a message on behalf of someone else, the client. I told them that in order for this sign to be good, they had to think on behalf of their client, the Wyoming Farmers’ Market.
2. Simple.  The second guide I offered was to keep the design simple. This sign will be seen by cars driving up and down Wyoming Ave., and the average time that someone will spend looking at it will be around 2 seconds! They were a bit surprised at the short time span until I asked how long they spend gazing at billboards. Point proven
3. Contrast. Since this was to be a street-view sign, high contrast had to be utilized. Signs like these are not the time for being subtle. They opted for a bright yellow background, and I had them outline all of their letters with extra-thick black Sharpie markers. That way, from a car, the lettering really pops to passers-by.
4. Quiet Areas.  Also known as “white space,” I said that keeping the main message (the logo) clean and clear from crowded imagery would make the sign easy to read. Often times signs and billboards have literal paragraphs of info, and no one reads those – it’s a waste of money to put a lot of message on sign intended to be seen by a person in a car.

Combined, these 4 guides work together to make great design – not just signs. I kept my time short and to-the-point, and I left the small group equipped to teach the rest of the youth that would gather later in the day.

This was a great opportunity to put design as both a career and as principles into action, and show a few youth a profession that they might not have thought of before. I had a great time doing a little art direction before I left.

Stay tuned… We will take a pic of the sign at next week’s Farmers’ Market, and post it here for a little extra publicity for this great organization.

- dan