The 1965 Highway Beautification Act established federal guidelines for off-premise signs (billboards) located within 660 feet of federal highways. When “changeable Electronic Variable Message Signs (CEVMS),” (typically called electronic message centers, or EMCs, in the sign industry), began to become more commonplace, individual states began to establish agreement (Federal/State Agreements — FSAs) with the Federal Highway […]
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How is the Size of Signs Measured?
The most common restriction in sign codes concerns the size of signs. This includes such considerations as the “setback,” (distance away from the road), the height and the dimensions of the sign itself. When the sign is a rectangle, and the copy fills it, it’s easy — height x width. A 4 x 6-foot sign […]
Continue readingWhat Types of Lighting are Used for Internally Illuminated Signs?
During the past 20 years, the three primary lighting sources for signs have been fluorescent, neon and LEDs, but the relative ratio of each type has drastically changed. The industry trade journal, Signs of the Times, has tracked these changes over time via industry surveys. The most recent such survey was published in ST‘s March 2015 […]
Continue readingWill GPS Make Signs Obsolete?
In 2008, a satellite-navigation specialist, Colin Beatty, presented a 27-slide PowerPoint presentation to the Sign Design Society, England’s leading environmental graphic design association. He asked the rhetorical question in his title:. “Could personal navigation systems herald the demise of much fixed signage?” In a column published in The Slate, author Julia Turner explores this question […]
Continue readingWhat the Street Graphics Books Say About Signs
In 1971, the American Planning Association (APA) began distributing a book called Street Graphics and the Law, which was authored by Daniel Mandelker and William Ewald. It recommended the uncompensated taking of signs and governmental control of signs’ design, message and content. The authors stated that their conclusions were substantially based on 1956 research conducted […]
Continue readingHow Does an Angled Sign’s Effectiveness Compare to a Parallel Sign?
The difference in conspicuity for parallel and perpendicular signs has been calculated by Penn State research, along with the requisite minimum sizes for the letters of each. But what if the local sign code won’t allow a bigger sign, and not enough projection length for a legible perpendicular sign? Would a sign with at least […]
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