The April 2012 Tutorial Discussion

[Barbara B]

The April 2012 Xara Video Tutorial on Xaraxone.com has arrived!

Gary Bouton takes you through the process of creating an outdoor sign, from concept, to typography, to drawing it in Xara Designer, to exporting it for personal printer and for commercial printing. How good does that get?! If you have a garage sale (don’t tell Gary), a bake sale, a sports league sign-up, or other service, event, or product you need to advertise on a sign, sign up today for Gary’s Xara TV tutorial for April 2012.

Check out the video, Designing a Sign With Xara Now!
Then come back here and show us your signs!

[steve.ledger]

404 - not found

[Barbara B]

OOPS! Should work now.

Thanks for the prompt heads up Steve.

[zaphodeist]

Barabara ... what have you got against Pink Flamingos?

[mwenz]

http://northeastportland.katu.com/ph...o-sneak-attack

[angelize]

Well It's definitely working now (or maybe I know the magic word! ) ) Very enjoyable Gary, I never noticed the tiling option in Acrobat Reader before so I have learned something already!

Here is a sign layout I put together. I included a line that is often included on Yard or Garage Sale signs around here NEB (No Early Birds) or seriously the ardent yard sale junkies would be camped on your doorstep while you are still in your PJs!

I'm not a huge fan of pink flamingos either, tell you what Barbara, I'll distract him in the Typography forum while you make it disappear!

[mwenz]

Love the slanted and reversed text, not so much the bullet between the Save text. I would stretch the backend of the arrow past the end of the italicized Please to balance out the arrow.

Hah, we always go early even to NEB designated sales...

Mike

[angelize]

But that bullet drew your attention didn't it You are right however about the back end of the arrow (that was sloppy of me)

[ankhor]

The good thing about ugly stuff in your yard is, that no-one will steal it.

And here is my add, we don`t have yard/garage sales etc here, it is basically a yearly thing
at queensday when you are allowed to sell in the streets (without tons of permits)
Here it is.

[Gare]

@Ankhor, very well reproduced. Me, I'd have tightened the spacing, so I had more room to make the text larger, but it's a fine example overall and thanks for watching the tutorial and participating!

The keys to effective sign-making are:

1. Clutter-awareness. When everyone is doing the same thing, you do something different. So if everyone is doing silly signs, you do a serious one to stand out in the crowd. Similarly, if everyone is using a dried-out laundry maker to make a sign, you follow the tutorial steps and make a professional one.

2. "Color", also called "density". Evaluate your sign from different zoom levels to see whether the average eye will be able to follow the text from a distance. Text that's crammed too tightly can't be read, and spindly text with too much air around the words is hard to follow by the average reader and they'll ignore it.

3. Hierarchy of your message. Levels of importance: what's the most important sentence? Make it your headline through the use of font boldness and font size (and choice of font). Do you all realize why I avoided a fancy typeface? Most important=Bold and large, least important=consider not even typing it, if it's that trivial! But do use a smaller point size and lighter weight.

4. Use position and very simple design elements to get attention. The "all sane offers..." line takes up approximately the same area as the arrow. Two messages at once, eh? And also "Save$" is small, through repetition it becomes more important visually.

You play with the elements until you get the ideal balance.

Barb doesn't hate plastic lawn flamingos; this was an amateur theater moment. In fact she bought several when a chain store here—Ames—closed years ago. When a neighbor does something tacky like buy a huge brightly colored playset for the yard, highly visibly, highly ugly and the kid isn't even old enough to use it at 8 months (!), The Boutons retaliate with a Flamingo Swarming, all birds facing the neighbors' house on the edge on our yard.

We entertained the idea of a "flocking" as it's called, but couldn't think of a neighbor to flock overnight, without incurring property damage after they discover the gifters.

I'm surprised everyone picked up on the flamingo! I try to limit myself to one piece of nonsense (okay, 20) per tutorial, and the real gag I thought was one of the garage sale items in the computer simulation:



Ah, well,

—gare