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Want to create a powerful sign? It starts with the three essential elements: a clear message, eye-catching visual elements and vibrant colors. If you plan your sign carefully before you begin, and pay attention to each of these three elements, you can create powerful, professional-looking signs. And best of all, you can create them yourself, right at your desktop, with Avery Sign Kits.

Develop a Clear Message

The message is the heart and purpose of a sign. It doesn’t matter how big or beautiful the sign is. If your message is lost, it’s a waste of time, energy and money. Your message will be communicated by two important factors: the words and the visual components.

Your message is usually clear in your head when you set out to make a sign: “Registration,” “First Aid,” “Grand Opening,” “Free Samples,” “Congratulations,” “Garage Sale.” Once you’ve come up with the main message, consider other critical pieces of information: time, date, location, or phone number. Every sign should keep words to a minimum, allowing font size, color and design to amplify the power of the words themselves.

Choose Eye-Catching Visual Elements

When planning the visual components of your sign, you must answer three important questions:

1. How far will the reader be from the sign?
2. What is the image you want to project?
3. Do you need graphics or will words be enough?

The distance between the sign and the reader will determine how big the text needs to be. Six-inch high letters can be seen from 60 feet away, twelve-inch letters from 120 feet and thirty-inch letters from 300 feet, etc., according to Gary Salomon, founder of FASTSIGNS^®, a sign and graphics company based in Texas. So be aware of the reading distance and choose font size accordingly.

What image or personality do you want to project? For most signs used in corporate environments or trade shows, a professional-looking sign that is sophisticated, yet simple, is a must. However, if a toy store needs a sale sign, a whimsical look might be in order. For a grand-opening sign, you might want to indicate a celebration. A garage sale or bake sale might profit from a sign that’s vibrant and fun. Determine the image you want to project, then choose a font, graphic and colors that suit that image.

If you choose to use graphics in your sign, be certain they help communicate your message. Using graphics for the sake of using graphics is a mistake. It will just add visual clutter and diminish the readability of your message. But well-chosen graphics can empower your sign by eliminating words.

Whether you’re using one of our pre-designed templates included in DesignPro^® software (for Mac or PC), or you choose to design your sign from scratch, the graphic elements you choose make an important impact. A study by the Pennsylvania College of Optometry shows that adding a border to a sign increases readability by 26%. Likewise, adding a second color to highlight important information increases reader attention by 78%.

The graphic design of your poster is the fun and very creative part of the project. Think out of the box: experiment with color and size of font and variations of graphics. Think BIG! Don’t be afraid to use multiple posters for the same message. If you’re making posters for a registration desk at a big event, why not spell out the word "REGISTER" one letter at a time on eight posters? Make color part of your graphic statement and repeat the word "REGISTER" on several banners of different colors.

Choose Vibrant Colors

If your company has a pre-defined color scheme, stick with it. If you’re choosing your own colors, remember that primary colors are a good choice when you want a sign to have impact. They’re bold, and they attract attention. Pastels work on signs read from short distances (bulletin boards, doors, tables), but they tend to be less legible from more than ten feet, except when used on a dark background.

Using light letters on a dark background cause the individual letters to appear bigger, even if the font size is exactly the same. So if you’re trying to decide whether to have a black background with white letters or vice versa, choose white on black (vs. black on white), especially if your sign is to be read from a distance.

Some colors have subliminal messages. You’ll often see orange and red used in restaurants because they communicate hunger. Blue and green communicate calm and confidence, so financial institutions often rely on them. Neon colors communicate excitement and youth, so you’ll find them used in fashion stores and hip gift shops.

By thinking about these simple elements, your signs will be clear, bold and powerful. And with Avery Sign Kits, they will also be easy to design, print and assemble yourself!

How to Create a Sign from Scratch

How to Create a Sign Using Predesigned Templates

	1. Choose “Design from Scratch” in the Avery DesignPro main menu.		1. Choose “Pre-Designed Template” in the Avery DesignPro main menu.
	2. Select a blank template for the sign product you want to create.		2. Select a pre-designed template for the sign product you want to create.
	3. Choose a graphic from Clip Art Gallery or insert your own from your computer files.		3. Change the text to customize the sign with your message. Format font type, size and color.
	4. Insert a text box and type your message. Format font type, size and color.		4. Print and assemble your customized sign!
	5. Print and assemble your customized sign!