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Need Help Need a layout done correctly for new Century 21 rebrand

shoresigns

New Member
Ugly is a matter of opinion. If they approved the layout and cut the check all I see is dollar signs. At the end of the day fat bank beats ugly.;)

Ugly is not a matter of opinion in design. That's art you're thinking of, not design.

Personally, I'd rather do good work and get paid for it. If you're only doing the latter, someone's going to catch on eventually and quit paying you.
 

visual800

Active Member
Heres mine I did. When I pull up guidelines I grab the logos and grab the colors look at a few dos and donts picture and thats about it. Those other 40 pages of garble I dont bother with. I do the layout for the agent and he submits and it got approved. If any changes are to be made I make them
 
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rjssigns

Active Member
Ugly is not a matter of opinion in design. That's art you're thinking of, not design.

Personally, I'd rather do good work and get paid for it. If you're only doing the latter, someone's going to catch on eventually and quit paying you.


Look at it from the client perspective. They may have spent hours on the design, gotten the family and friends involved and love the look. Now you're going to point out flaws telling them in not so few words that their work is crap. That's the point where things get quiet and they decide you're an idiot and won't do business with you.

As far as people "catching on" and having to close shop I'm not worried. Like any shop I have a mix of clients. Some give this dog a lot of chain while others "roll their own".
It's an unavoidable truth of being in this business.

Conclusion: Three decades ago I learned a lesson of immeasurable value from Mr. Zizzo, at the time a high end car dealer. He laid bare the tenets of respect, honesty and how the person you're dealing with could turn out to be one of your biggest clients and good friend. Wife and I went to buy a car and were instead treated to a life changing lesson. Funny how that works...
 

myront

CorelDRAW is best

myront

CorelDRAW is best
upload_2020-5-29_9-28-36.png
 

visual800

Active Member
Clear misuse of the branding according to the guidelines. Epic fail in my book!


you have to take in account the odd shaped signage that the logo was done on. there was some alterations and the agent submitted for approval to Century 21, it was approved and job was done. Sounds to me like you take guidelines to heart and go strictly by the book. I do not conform to rules of someone that does not take in consideration, different aspects of sign sizes and situations
 

Bobby H

Arial Sucks.
rjssigns said:
Look at it from the client perspective. They may have spent hours on the design, gotten the family and friends involved and love the look. Now you're going to point out flaws telling them in not so few words that their work is crap. That's the point where things get quiet and they decide you're an idiot and won't do business with you.

That angle doesn't really work when it comes to a national brand, such as Century 21. The brand is 100% the property of the national company. It doesn't belong to franchise operators at all. The national company has its own brand guidelines that have to be followed. An individual shop owner can't just do his own DIY design, often changing fonts, colors, distorting elements and other alterations then expect that to fly.

Usually major companies are expected to cover some or even all of the sign costs at any franchise location. The home office isn't going to pay squat if they see something that disregards their branding standards. I've personally seen national companies come and force the franchise owner to remove goofed up, non-compliant signs and replace them at their own cost. Other major companies force franchise operators to order signs directly from them and/or their approved vendors.

Even when it's a small business with no national brand affiliation, a responsible sign company has to at least advise the business owner about what works and what does not on signs. Wannabe designers almost always have no clue. Lots of experienced graphic designers working in other fields make lots of mistakes when they try designing signs.

If a sign company takes a client's DIY design and reproduces it as is and doesn't say a word, the client may end up angry at the sign company anyway when it turns out their home-brewed design really sucks when put into use on a building or by the street.

myront said:
Clear misuse of the branding according to the guidelines. Epic fail in my book!

I agree. The examples visual800 posted don't comply with the C21 Masterbrand Guidelines rules regarding white space around the C21 icon. Then there's all the required letter size ratios between the "Century 21" letters, the C21 icon and other lettering in the design. It can be quite a puzzle to put together. It sure doesn't work in that extremely rectangular space. And the "Brandt White Realty" lettering is set in a typeface that doesn't conform to the brand guidelines.

rjssigns said:
Client approved, Visual got paid. Win!

It might be a win for now. I doubt if the client ran the design up the chain for approval by corporate.

By the way, that is one really really $#!tty multi-listing monument sign to have tenant spaces designed that small and extreme rectangular. Logos can't work well in those confined spaces, just basic text. I've grown to hate a lot of those kinds of signs for all badly designed clutter that eventually infects them. And that really happens a lot when multiple sign companies start swapping out faces on the same structure.
 
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Notarealsignguy

Arial - it's almost helvetica
That angle doesn't really work when it comes to a national brand, such as Century 21. The brand is 100% the property of the national company. It doesn't belong to franchise operators at all. The national company has its own brand guidelines that have to be followed. An individual shop owner can't just do his own DIY design, often changing fonts, colors, distorting elements and other alterations then expect that to fly.

Usually major companies are expected to cover some or even all of the sign costs at any franchise location. The home office isn't going to pay squat if they see something that disregards their branding standards. I've personally seen national companies come and force the franchise owner to remove goofed up, non-compliant signs and replace them at their own cost. Other major companies force franchise operators to order signs directly from them and/or their approved vendors.

Even when it's a small business with no national brand affiliation, a responsible sign company has to at least advise the business owner about what works and what does not on signs. Wannabe designers almost always have no clue. Lots of experienced graphic designers working in other fields make lots of mistakes when they try designing signs.

If a sign company takes a client's DIY design and reproduces it as is and doesn't say a word, the client may end up angry at the sign company anyway when it turns out their home-brewed design really sucks when put into use on a building or by the street.



I agree. The examples visual800 posted don't comply with the C21 Masterbrand Guidelines rules regarding white space around the C21 icon. Then there's all the required letter size ratios between the "Century 21" letters, the C21 icon and other lettering in the design. It can be quite a puzzle to put together. It sure doesn't work in that extremely rectangular space. And the "Brandt White Realty" lettering is set in a typeface that doesn't conform to the brand guidelines.



It might be a win for now. I doubt if the client ran the design up the chain for approval by corporate.

By the way, that is one really really $#!tty multi-listing monument sign to have tenant spaces designed that small and extreme rectangular. Logos can't work well in those confined spaces, just basic text. I've grown to hate a lot of those kinds of signs for all badly designed clutter that eventually infects them. And that really happens a lot when multiple sign companies start swapping out faces on the same structure.
Y’all think too much about this stuff. Maybe the monument sign had square footage or height restrictions. Its not like everyone in the world is clueless. At the end of the day, what matters is the client being happy.
 

visual800

Active Member
Jesus Christ wtf is wrong with some of you.

I come from a time where things "may" have to be altered to work in some situations. maybe Im too lax but I dont sit and read every document of a freaking guideline. It was their logo and their colors and it worked on the monument we had to deal with, there were not other options. maybe I should have said......."Due to the guidelines of the art we are going to have to order a whole new monument, because Im Bruce and I follow the rules to a "T". Layout I do reflect what choices we have to work with with signage we have. personally for me, I hate that sign, it is very awkward but that broker is a damn good dude and di what I had to

You are given a choice in this business, you can make something work and skew the lines or dont do do the d@mn job at all. Now, you are questioning if the broker got approval of the f@cking sign. Some of you just dont stop, some of you need to be attorneys because signs obviously bore you
 

Texas_Signmaker

Very Active Signmaker
Jesus Christ wtf is wrong with some of you.

I come from a time where things "may" have to be altered to work in some situations. maybe Im too lax but I dont sit and read every document of a freaking guideline. It was their logo and their colors and it worked on the monument we had to deal with, there were not other options. maybe I should have said......."Due to the guidelines of the art we are going to have to order a whole new monument, because Im Bruce and I follow the rules to a "T". Layout I do reflect what choices we have to work with with signage we have. personally for me, I hate that sign, it is very awkward but that broker is a damn good dude and di what I had to

You are given a choice in this business, you can make something work and skew the lines or dont do do the d@mn job at all. Now, you are questioning if the broker got approval of the f@cking sign. Some of you just dont stop, some of you need to be attorneys because signs obviously bore you

Don't you wish some of these people were competitors in your market?

Bobby would make the client feel like they had a lawsuit coming their way. Myront is stuck in 2010 yelling "epic fail" at the client.

Then they go to you and you make it work, Century approves and everyone is happy...except your competition...they are busy jerking themselves off.
 

GAC05

Quit buggin' me
Jesus Christ wtf is wrong with some of you.

I come from a time where things "may" have to be altered to work in some situations. maybe Im too lax but I dont sit and read every document of a freaking guideline. It was their logo and their colors and it worked on the monument we had to deal with, there were not other options. maybe I should have said......."Due to the guidelines of the art we are going to have to order a whole new monument, because Im Bruce and I follow the rules to a "T". Layout I do reflect what choices we have to work with with signage we have. personally for me, I hate that sign, it is very awkward but that broker is a damn good dude and di what I had to

You are given a choice in this business, you can make something work and skew the lines or dont do do the d@mn job at all. Now, you are questioning if the broker got approval of the f@cking sign. Some of you just dont stop, some of you need to be attorneys because signs obviously bore you

Some times you help the client by following the rules.
We do a lot of work for a national fuel chain here. We had been dressing out their forecourt graphics, pumps, tankers & road signage for several years.
They got called to get ready for an on-site branding compliance audit.
A team came in with their corporate branding binders, tape measures and Pantone color chips. They went over every single bit of signage at each of the retail outlets, fuel farm & the tanker fleet.
We got gig'd on several items (mainly color match on printed items) that were not up to standard. Because the team could see that an attempt had been made to follow the standards as closely as could be done with local production, they gave them a list of things to fix and went ahead and passed them on the audit. Clearing that was one of part of them being able to renew their license to use the brand.

When we started working for them they gave me all the branding guide books they had and when marketing dropped something they wanted done that didn't look right we'd work with them to bring it into standard. Didn't catch everything and some stuff fell into the "Just get it done" category but overall it has worked out pretty well for both of us so far.
 
C

ColoPrinthead

Guest
I feel like signs should have exceptions from certain guidelines, especially space around the logo. I did some beautyrest posters and made the logo fill the width beyond what their branding guidelines would allow - because it looked silly with that much space as a mast head and that is generally the comment you get most often "make the logo bigger". My layout was approved by the mattress company so I made them only to have our marketing manager give me grief about it until I reminded her the manufacturer approved my art.
 
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