What has the Federal Highway Administration said about Off-premise Electronic Message Centers?

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 […]

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What Types of Signs are Most Commonly Used?

A significant way to divide the sign industry is into “electric” signs (which have internal illumination) and “commercial” signs, which are non-illuminated. For approximately three decades, a trade journal for the sign industry, Signs of the Times, conducted surveys of sign companies as to how their businesses were faring. These were called State of the […]

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What 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 […]

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Will 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 […]

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What 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 […]

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What are Some Guidelines for Electronic Message Center Resolution?

A critical aspect of any sign is viewing distance. The appropriate amount of detail varies greatly, depending on the distance from which the sign will be viewed. In digital printing, this “resolution” is determined by “dots per inch,” or DPI. The more closely an image will be viewed, the higher its resolution needs to be, […]

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Can a Changeable-copy Sign Help a Business?

A car wash in California had a two-color, freestanding, rectangular ground sign. It replaced it with a sign of the same proportion, which constituted a multi-color, dimensional cabinet sign on a pole, with a manual, changeable-copy sign below it. The sign cost $15,000. In the first year after the new sign was installed, gross revenue […]

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How Did One Car Dealer Succeed When Three Others had Failed?

Melvin Tuchez worked as an employee in the auto-sales business, and then he purchased his own dealership, Aztec Motors, in San Fernando, California. He believed three other auto-sales companies on the same site had failed due to inferior branding and weak management. He immediately began spending $16,000 per month on print and on-air advertising. A […]

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