On Stadium Boulevard, there used to be an Ace Hardware store. The building is still there and has a new occupant. The signage for the building is placed on a fake wall that crosses through the front corner of the store, going on up above the roofline in a sort of chimney-like style. It’s actually an interesting treatment.

When Ace was there, the word Ace was on the chimney-wall, very large and easily readable. When they moved out and a new store moved in, they naturally took down ‘Ace’ and put up their own sign. But this sign they put up is completely out of scale with the building. It’s so small that it’s hardly readable. They’ve recently tacked up another sign listing what they sell underneath the ‘real’ sign. It suffers from the same problem.

I am convinced this stems from people doing their own graphic design. A professional should know better – although based on what I see around town, not all of them know, either. People get something going on their computer screen and it looks great and is readable there, but they have no idea how that translates into real world signage.

Billboards are another place you see this phenonenon all the time. There is text so small that you can’t read it when standing still and looking at it, let alone when you’re driving by. Designing for the web or for print is simply not the same as designing signage.

And not only does this lack of sense of scale make signs useless, it also makes them ugly. The orange cones aren’t gone from Stadium yet, but they almost are – and the new sidewalks and lights look terrific. But then there’s Big George’s hideous sign and this goofy little stuck-on out-of-scale thing next door and the red and gawdawful green thing they did to the old Arbor Farms building. Shudder.

It’s a real shame. Reminds me of the Spinal Tap Stonehenge.