Signage that reads from the road

Business signs tend to fail the same way. They’re designed on a laptop at arm’s length, approved on a laptop at arm’s length, and then bolted to a building 40 metres from a road where people drive past at 60 km/h. What looked balanced on screen turns into a coloured rectangle with some small writing on it.

A sign isn’t a flyer on a wall. It has a few seconds, a distance and a speed to work with, and everything about the design follows from those three things.

Start with the distance and the speed

Before any design, stand where your customers will be when they first see the sign. For a shopfront, that might be across the street. For a rural business or an industrial unit, it’s often a moving car.

Then do some simple maths. A car at 60 km/h covers about 16.7 metres a second. At 80 km/h it’s about 22 metres a second, and at 100 km/h nearly 28. If your sign first comes into clear view 100 metres before the driveway, a driver at 80 km/h has roughly four and a half seconds with it, and they need some of that to watch the road and decide to turn.

That’s the real brief. Four seconds, glanced at, while driving. It rules out most of what people want to put on a sign.

For a pedestrian strip like River Street in Ballina, the time is longer but the attention isn’t. People are walking, talking and looking at their phones. You still have a glance, not a read.

Fewer words than you think

The test we use: what’s the one thing someone needs to know to stop, turn in or remember you? Usually it’s:

1. Who you are (your name or logo)
2. What you do, in two to four words, if your name doesn’t say it
3. Sometimes, one action: “Next left”, “Open 7 days”, “Drive in”

That’s it. Phone numbers, web addresses, lists of services and taglines rarely get read from a moving car. Nobody memorises a ten-digit number at 80 km/h. If you want to give people a number or website, put it on a sign they’ll see when stationary: at the entry, on the door, at the counter.

A common list sign we see: “Smith’s Landscaping Supplies: soil, mulch, gravel, pavers, sleepers, sand, rocks, pickups and delivery, open Mon to Sat, phone 02 …” Every word added makes every other word smaller and harder to read. “Smith’s Landscape Supplies. Drive in.” does the job, and the yard full of mulch heaps does the rest.

Letter size: test it, don’t guess

There are plenty of rules of thumb for letter height versus viewing distance, and they disagree with each other because typefaces, lighting and eyesight vary so much. Rather than trust a formula, do a cheap physical test:

1. Print your main word at the size you’re planning. Tape a few A3 sheets together if needed.
2. Stick it up roughly where the sign will go.
3. Walk or drive to where customers will first see it.
4. Look for two seconds, then look away. Could you read it?

Do it at the time of day your customers drive past, and ask someone who hasn’t seen the design. If they squint, it’s too small, too thin or too crowded.

This one test settles more arguments than any amount of discussion over a mock-up.

Contrast that works outdoors

Outdoors, the enemy is glare, shadow and backgrounds you don’t control. Light text on a dark sign can glow nicely at night but disappear in afternoon sun. Mid-tone colours on mid-tone colours (teal on orange, grey on blue) wash out almost completely.

What reliably works:

• Strong light-dark contrast between letters and background. Dark on light or light on dark, not mid on mid.
• Solid backgrounds behind text. Photos and gradients behind words make them harder to read.
• Bold or medium weights. Thin, light and script fonts lose their strokes at distance.
• Generous space between letters and lines, especially for illuminated signs, where light bleeds and closes up gaps.

Think about the wall behind the sign as well. A beautiful dark green panel on a dark timber facade won’t stand out. Our article on colour contrast and readability goes further on picking colours that hold up.

Will your logo survive the trip?

Logos designed for a business card often have details that vanish at distance: fine lines, small taglines, intricate icons, gradients. Before committing to a sign, look at your logo shrunk to the size it’ll appear from the road (try it at thumbnail size on screen, or squint).

If parts disappear, you have options:

• Use a simplified version. Most good brand identities include a stacked or simplified version for exactly this.
• Drop the tagline. It’ll be unreadable anyway.
• Use the icon and name only, larger, instead of the full lockup.

If your logo has no version that works at distance, that’s a sign (sorry) the brand needs a simpler variant. It’ll help on social media profile images and vehicles too.

Materials, lighting and approvals

Design and fabrication go together. Talk to your sign maker early about materials, mounting and lighting, because those affect the design. Cut letters cast shadows, lightboxes change how colours look at night, and some finishes reflect glare. In our experience the best results come when the designer and fabricator talk before artwork is final.

Check approvals too. In NSW, some business signs can go up as exempt development, while others need consent from council, and heritage areas and road-facing signs can have extra rules. Your sign maker or local council can tell you which applies, and the NSW Planning Portal is where the planning rules live. This is general information, not planning advice, so check before you order. If you lease, your landlord will probably have a say as well.

The sign-off list

Run through this short list:

• Have you stood (or driven) where customers will first see it?
• Can someone new to the design read the main words in two seconds at that distance?
• Is everything that isn’t essential gone?
• Does the text contrast strongly with its background, in both sun and shade?
• Does your logo hold up at the size it’ll actually be seen?
• Have you checked council and landlord approval?

If you’re planning signage, vehicle graphics like the ones in our guide to vehicle signage for tradies, or both, our graphic design team can prepare artwork that works at distance and is ready for your sign maker. Tell us where it’s going and we’ll start from there.