The New York Times reports that after using the same font on highway signs for over 50 years, America’s Federal Highway Administration has approved a new font, ClearviewHwy. Clearview is replacing Highway Gothic which has been in use since Eisenhower decided to expand the Interstate System in 1956.

Why the change?

Highway Gothic’s letter shapes were never tested for readability, but Clearview is the result of rigorous testing in the pursuit of a more legible font. So just how much better is Clearview than Highway Gothic?

Signs that you’d be hard pressed to read at 700 feet were legible at 900 or 1,000 feet.
-James Montalbano :: Founder :: Terminal Design

That is a 28% to 43% improvement.

What does this mean to the church?

Test your signage. Church graphic designers should always be mindful of how their aesthetic decisions will influence the effectiveness of their design’s purpose. Here are some tips to help you design and implement great church signs from Paco Underhill’s book Why We Buy. Note: I have replaced the word “store” with “church” and replaced “shoppers” and “customers” with “visitors.”

• To say whether a sign or any in-church media works or not, there’s only one way to assess it — in place.
• The difference between an inadvertent glance at a sign and a thorough reading might be two or three seconds.
• If you’ve put the right sign in the wrong place, [it] is actually worse than putting a so-so sign in the perfect place.
• If you don’t get their attention first, nothing else will register.
• You can’t just look around your church, see where there are empty spots on the walls and put signs there.
• Every church is a collection of zones, and you’ve got to map them out before you can place a single sign. You’ve got to get up and walk around, asking yourself with every step: What will visitors be doing here? Where will their eyes be focused when they stand here? And what will they be thinking about over there?
• Each zone is right for one kind of message and wrong for all others. Putting a sign that requires twelve seconds to read in a place where visitors spend four seconds is just slightly more effective than putting it in your garage.
• When it comes to positioning a sign, the difference between an ideal viewing spot and a terrible one is often just a few feet.

Paco Underhill also addresses 9 principles that make highway signs effective:

1. no extra words
2. the right sign at the right place
3. enough signs that drivers don’t feel ignored or underinformed
4. not so many signs that there’s clutter or confusion
5. use a vocabulary of icons
6. the color combination provides enough contrast
7. the lettering is large
8. the lighting is good
9. the positioning is just so

And with the introduction of Clearview, principle #10 is “choosing the right font.”

Design and implement your church signs like they are highway signs. These are 10 principles that work.

[via Trend Hunter]