There was a time when we advised Realtors that their phone number was the most important element on their for sale signs. Now, it’s most certainly your web site address that should receive special attention. Here’s why:

If you were to read three signs with the lines below, which would be the easiest to remember?

I always tell my clients that they don’t need to include “www.” on their signs. Home buyers know it’s a web site when they read the “.com” or “.net” suffix. You should alway capitalize the first letter of every word in your domain. Domain names by themselves are not case sensitive.

We’ve all been tempted to use images found on Google & Yahoo image searches. Unfortunately, “borrowing” these images will almost certainly bring you copyright troubles. So, I turn to two of my favorite sources for images:

Open Clip Art Library is a great source of illustrations that can be freely used. All the files are available as PNG or SVG filetypes.

Dreamstime has a huge collection of royalty free images at very reasonable prices. I really like their wide selection of photography.

JR Screen Ruler is a very useful and compact utility that allows you to accurately measure anything on your screen. I use it all the time to measure space in various browser windows, size of photos and graphics.

Pixie How many times have you run across a site with a truly inspiring color scheme? Just don’t know how to communicate those colors to your web designer or printer? Run your mouse over any on screen object and Pixie will tell you the hex, RGB, HTML, CMYK and HSV values.

Inkscape is an open-source (free) vector graphics editor similar to Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, Freehand, or Xara X. Professional graphic artists use vector graphics so logos & illustrations can be enlarged without loss of quality. This is especially important for sign graphics. You can also create Flash-like web content using Inkscape because was designed from the ground up to use Scalable Vector Graphics.

Last week, a potential client came to us with hopes of us making his sign more interesting. He was looking for new ideas on how to make his company’s sign more appealing. The original sign design was very outdated and resembled a driver’s license. It was my job to create a new, more attractive sign.

The original design was flat and boring. In order for me to create a more attractive sign I had to turn to Adobe Photoshop, which provides me with limitless possibilities. I started by adding a small gradient to the bottom of the sign, while making the phone number larger. This makes the phone number stand out more as it is the most important element of the design. I also added a slight drop shadow to the company name to give it more contrast to the orange background behind it. Next, I worked on the company logo. In the original design, the logo blended in with all of the other text because it had no contrast from the elements around it. (more…)

As a sign designer, I’m often asked for suggestions of good sign colors.  I answer with a question: what colors do the large independent real estate companies in your area use? Avoid those. Stay clear of colors used by the franchises. Go for unique. Color is a huge factor in how memorable your yard signs are to buyers.

The biggest mistake I run across is limiting yourself to one or two colors, picked from the 12 main colors of the color wheel. [Flash back to high school art class]. Our graphic artists and screen printers have thousands of colors in their palettes. They love creating color schemes if given the opportunity. Give them the freedom of using three or four colors for your signs…ooooh, they’ll be fighting each other to work on your sign design! (more…)