It’s Wednesday again, and you know what that means… WTF? Today’s signs are meant for our safety. I can’t fathom how many lives were saved by such clear messaging.

Check out this sign on an apartment building in my neighborhood. It sucks. It’s not that stacked type is in and of itself a bad thing, but stacking lowercase type is criminal. Don’t do it. The end.

Welcome to this week’s edition of “WTF Wednesday,” where we dissect and discuss the higher art of signage design. Sometimes a hand-drawn message is the best option for temporary signage. In this case, the designer has elegantly captured the drama of the moment: It takes great skill to create beautiful bilingual signage. The challenge is to make a pleasing design that doesn’t send mixed messages. Nothing gets lost in translation in the sign below, which is an excellent example of minimalist design combined with clarity of message: The combination of signs below creates clear directions for what could potentially become a very confusing situation. Fortunately in this case, crisis has been avoided thanks to good, solid graphic design: As we draw to the close of this week’s edition, I’d like to remind you to keep your eyes open for more examples of signs that make you say, “WTF??”  Now get out there and make things pretty.

Welcome to another edition of “WTF Wednesday.” Today’s examples show us how to clearly define an audience. Our first sign appeals to bargain shoppers trying to form a basketball team for the year 2029: The next two signs are aimed at hikers: Well, that’s all for this week’s “WTF Wednesday.” Feel free to submit your samples which could be featured in a future post!

The year is 1987, and the giant-haired version of myself is a sophomore at the University of Texas at Austin. Disillusioned and uninspired as only a 20 year old can be, I find myself hiking across campus to that bastion of black jeans and unfiltered cigarettes, The Art Department. I have found my people. More importantly, I have found my new major. And so begins my life as a graphic designer. My parents/financiers have no idea what that means, and I fear my funding may soon be in jeopardy. My classrooms contain drafting tables and easels. The supply list includes paintbrushes and razor blades. Am I taking a class or remodeling a house? A laptop is where you put your napkin, a mouse is a small rodent, and Adobe Acrobat is a gymnast from New Mexico… The year is 1987. In case you are wondering how to identify the illusive “Outstandingly Long-lived Designer” (O.L.D.), here are a few clues: Missing tips of two or more fingers Has worked with cameras larger than most one bedroom apartments Understands that zips and floppies aren’t the latest drug fad First computer was a MacPlus or SE Knows the difference between tracking and kerning…

Welcome to this week’s edition of WTF Wednesday. Today’s first submission comes from everybody’s current or soon-to-be favorite fitness trainer, Christine Tusa, with Tusa Fitness. Welcome to the classy side of the river: Here we have a few signs that are welcome, if entirely unexpected:

This week’s WTF Wednesday submission comes from photographer David Ingram, who took this lovely photo of me in front of Mr. Weenie’s artwork a few weeks ago. He also took the first two photos you see below. Here we have signage that’s goal isn’t to be beautiful, but rather to inform. It is exactly halfway successful. The photo below is by an unknown photographer, but apparently he has the same passion for graphic design that I do. So that’s all for this edition of WTF Wednesday. Feel free to send me your photos for future posts. Now, go out there and make things pretty!

Hello, and welcome to this week’s edition of Tuesday’s Type Tip. Today we delve into the seedy side of typography with the letter “X.” The “x-height” of a typeface is the distance from baseline to meanline. The meanline runs across the tops of the main bodies of lowercase letters, excluding ascenders & descenders. This critical distance helps determine a typeface’s identity and influences its legibility. The letter “X” is used for this measurement because it has a flat base and top. (Unlike those degenerate curved letters that screw everything up.) *See last week’s post for more on the beautiful but challenging letter “O.” Although the letters below are set in different typefaces, they’re all the same point size! It boggles the mind. Note that letters with serifs (above left) tend to have smaller x-heights when compared to their sans serif cousins. (More on the fascinating nature of serifs in a future post.) Now check this out: See how the type in the upper two paragraphs appears less dense than in the bottom two? That’s because type with a small x-height has longer ascenders and descenders (protruding/danglin’ parts of lowercase letters such as d, y, h and g). This factor creates…