How tall do your sign letters need to be?

Ukraine has no national standard for sign letter height, so we are not going to invent one. We take two industry references and convert them to metric:

• the International Sign Association puts the minimum at one inch of letter height per 25 feet of distance — exactly 1 cm per 3 m
• the rule of thumb published across the trade, one inch per 10 feet, gives 1 cm per 1.2 m — and that is what we design to

Sources disagree on what to call the second figure: some treat it as the maximum readable distance, others as comfortable reading. We leave the disagreement visible. The first number is the floor below which there is nothing left to argue about; the second is what we build to, and it matches what we see on facades.

The table describes ideal conditions: a clean face, good contrast, a roughly frontal view. Reality is usually worse, and each of the factors below eats into the margin:

• weak contrast between the lettering and its background — the most common reason a “big sign” still does not read
• a sharp viewing angle along the street, which visually compresses the letters
• thin or condensed weights, and small caps with wide gaps
• a dirty or sun-bleached face, or a failed illumination module
• an unlit sign on a dark facade in the evening, which simply disappears

So when your distance sits near the limit, take the next size up.

The numbers are a starting point. On the free site visit we measure the facade and the distances the sign is actually seen from, then lay the design over a photograph of your building.

The photomontage settles the argument about height: it shows immediately whether the name gets lost or overwhelms the facade. Only then do we build, to the agreed dimensions.