🪧 What Makes a Good Sign?

Hines · May 13, 2025, 10:42am

I have a new building for the town of Susanville, originally sold by Pola as a hotel. My town already has a station, hotel, dancehall, saloon, eatery, bunkhouse, freight station, and a hardware store/emporium. I’m considering repurposing the building as a veterinarian’s office combined with the Susanville Telegraph & Telephone company.

I’ve been trying to channel my inner Jon Radder, but I’m unsure about my choices in fonts and organization for the signage. Does this style fit the 1880-1920?

JRad · May 13, 2025, 12:56pm

Well, I’m a modern sign guy, definitely not an expert on that period.

In modern sign design, the rules are simple. #1 rule is readability. To achieve that designers use high contrast colors usually avoiding red and blue, fonts that are not too fancy and letters large enough to be read at a distance.

Back then everything was hand made. Carved or raised letters were rare because of the expense of hand fabrication. Most signs were two dimensional and all were hand painted. I did some quick research and it really depends on the area; rural or urban and economy; boom or bust. This Shorpy.com photo is kind of typical of early twentieth century in a local bust economy…

My personal choice of your designs is A - It’s clean and simple. Clip art didn’t exist back then and even today, good sign shops keep designs simple.

My father was in the advertising business and held most every position from copy writer to layout designer to ad exec. His #1 rule is WHITE SPACE IS GOOD. The more the merrier. He would run full page newspaper ads with tow or three words in the center of the page and they worked!

Korm · May 13, 2025, 2:39pm

Bill, first you must decide, what you want.
please a person named Susan, or make a more or less realistic layout.

in the second case you can count on most people in the street knowing, where they are.
that the place is called Susanville is found on the station platform and entering the town by road.
what you can not count on, is that people know, where the vet is situated.

so, a good sign would stress, veterinary and taxidermist (although the latter can be found by
the smell too)
the next prominent should be the slogan.
name of the town/village would be in small letters or absent.

or would you advertise a bar/saloon in tombstone as:
-----TOMBSTONE------
--------bar - saloon-----------
warm beer & cold steak

just asking…

Rick_Marty · May 13, 2025, 2:47pm

Bill my vote would be for “A” but without the slogan.
The Name of the business is Susanville vet and tax not something else vet and tax, nothing to do with discovering what town your in.

Just an old farts opinion.

John_Lenheiser · May 13, 2025, 3:00pm

Many with model RR use family members names in their business on their RR. Not sure if this was the case here, but if it works for you then go for it. Remember it’s your RR and you can do what you want.