There are two key elements in sign design – font selection and font size.
Font selection for sign design has been studied and a summary of the study was recently published in Sign of the Times (August 2016.) Philip Garvey at Penn State performed the study with the goal of to determine optimum font for improved legibility in sign design.
Out of 33 fonts tested, the font that was found to be most legible was Gill Sans uppercase and the least legible was Mistral. Other font types that tested well in the study were Avenir Medium, Copperplate Gothic UC, Helvetica UC and Kabel Ultra UC.
According to Sign of the Times article, adding bold to a certain font can make a considerable difference in legibility. Three fonts showed significant improvement when bolding; Times, Optima and Garmond. However, other fonts did not show the same improvement. For example Helvetica Bold did not test as well as Helvetica.
Another important item to consider in sign design is the height of the font. This has also been studied by Garvey in previous years. He noted, under optimum conditions (day time and low complexity environment), a font is legible 10 feet for every inch of letter. For example, a 10” letter would be readable in optimum conditions at 100 feet. Many signs don’t get to be placed in optimum conditions. The environment they are in often has background noise. This noise impacts the legibility and reduces it to 7 feet for every inch of letter; so in a noisy environment a 10 inch letter is now legible at 70 feet compared to 100 feet originally mentioned.
The above elements are critical for successful sign design. Convey Sign Solutions thinks through these items to design a sign that provides maximum effectiveness. For more information, contact Convey at sales@conveysign.com.