We made a few different signs for Guardian Angel, a Catholic school in Pacoima, California. They were making a few changes around the campus and the changes included updating their existing sign and adding a couple of new signs. They didn’t have a design yet, but they had a general idea of what they wanted on the signs. As you can see from the photos, we ended up going with a blue and white theme and using a sans-serif, easy to read font for the lettering that wasn’t their school name. For the school name we pulled the font from the logo, but using that font for the entire sign would have made it hard to read.
They originally wanted to include all of the information you see here, along with information regarding at what age they accept students, that financial aid is available, and the address. The problem with replacing the face on an existing sign is that we already have a set amount of space that we can work with. Even when we are making a new sign, we are limited by what the city will allow, and can’t always fit all of the information we want on a sign while making sure it’s legible. Another issue is that if you put too much information on a sign, people who are driving by will not be able to read all of the information while the sign is in their line of sight.
The existing sign panels that we were replacing were not rectangles, they were rectangles with a half-circle at the top that contained the school name so we mimicked that design for the first proof including all of the information that they had originally wanted. We also went with a gradient background instead of a solid one. The client didn’t like how it looked so we went through a few revisions changing the shape of the panels, moving the information around, and playing with different fonts.
They eventually ended up finalizing the designs you see in these photos, and we think that the signs look great and are easy to read.