Directional signs

A directional sign is read in the second before someone commits to a turn, which makes it a different problem from a sign that is read standing still. The arrow carries at roughly twice the distance the wording does, so the useful question is not whether the sign is legible but whether the arrow is unambiguous from where the decision is made.

900 × 600mm landscape is the board for a gate, a car park or a fence line where the reader is walking or crawling in a vehicle. 1200 × 900mm is the one for a main road or a site big enough that a truck picks its lane early. 600 × 900mm portrait suits a narrow post or a stack of two or three signs on one fence, where the boards read down rather than across.

The wording is the shortest thing that is still unambiguous. SITE ENTRY is a directional sign; ALL DELIVERIES AND CONTRACTORS REPORT TO THE SITE OFFICE BEFORE ENTERING is a paragraph on a board, and it will be set small enough that nobody reads it from a moving vehicle. Put the short thing on the first line and the qualification on the second, which is what the second line is for. The general rule is about 10mm of letter height for every 3 metres of viewing distance — the viewing-distance guide has the table.

A fence line usually needs the same wording pointing both ways — SITE ENTRY with a right arrow at one end of the hoarding, the same sign with a left arrow at the other, so whichever way somebody arrives they are sent the same place. The same is true of a car park with two approaches, and of a building where deliveries can come off either street.

Add the sign once, choose the opposite arrow, and add it again: each direction is its own line in the cart because it is its own printed board. Boards are sold in fives, so a pair of directions is five of each — $247 for the ten, including GST and delivery — which is one for each gate, each corner and the car park, with spares for when one walks.

Choose a logo and two more choices appear: whether it sits at the head of the sign or at the foot, and how much of the board it takes. At the foot is the usual place — the arrow and the wording do their job and your name signs it off. At the head reads more like a letterhead and suits a sign at a branded entrance, where people know whose gate they are walking through before they know which way to turn.

The three sizes are a tenth, a sixth and roughly a fifth of the board’s height. They are shares rather than millimetres on purpose: the same choice fits every size we sell, and the strip is taken out of the board before the arrow and the wording are laid out in what is left. That is why a large logo makes the arrow smaller rather than landing on top of it, and why nothing you choose can push type off the sign. There is no size past a quarter of the board, because past that it is a logo with an arrow underneath rather than a directional sign.

A logo costs nothing extra. You see the space reserved in the preview as you choose, and the logo itself on the proof at print size.

Block is the solid arrow: a shaft and a broad head, filling most of its square. It is the heavier of the two at distance because there is simply more ink in it, and it is the one to choose for a road frontage, a large car park, or anywhere the sign is read from a vehicle.

Chevron is the angle bracket — the same direction with less weight. It reads as more considered and less industrial, which suits a reception, a shopfront, an event or a building someone is walking through rather than driving past. Close up it is just as clear; at fifty metres the block arrow wins.

There is no third arrow, and that is deliberate. A directional sign has one job, and the shapes that do it well are the shapes a reader already recognises without being taught. Neither style costs more than the other.

The preview on this page shows the arrow and the words at the sign’s proportions. Once the order is in, we set the print file from what you typed and send a proof link that opens on your phone. Check the direction against the way somebody will actually approach the sign, and send it back if it is wrong. Nothing goes to press until you approve it.

If it comes back wrong against an approved proof, that is on us. If it matches the proof you approved, it is not — which is why the proof is worth two minutes of your time.