Standard Highway Signs 2004 Edition: Pavement Markings
The pattern
This still is filed under Mark as compressed claim.
Define
The mark itself is the sentence: a monogram, a seal, a device that already means the claim.
Mechanism
Compression. Years of use, or a very sharp first use, load the device so it can appear without copy.
Verdict
The mark is already loaded, or we will spend to load it
Why it works
The whole section is an argument about foreshortening. A driver sees pavement type at a very low angle, which compresses it vertically, so the drawn letterform is stretched vertically to compensate and only looks correct from the car. Publishing the distorted artwork rather than an instruction to stretch removes judgement from the crew. Dimensions are given as repeat counts - five spaces at 4.75, three spaces at 27 inches - because a painter works by stepping out a stencil down a lane, not by measuring a total. Symbols are separated from legend and given their own height rule, so the bicycle and the word can be scaled independently without the pair drifting out of proportion.
Steal this when
Steal this when your artwork will be viewed under a distortion you can predict - a shallow angle, a curved surface, a wrapped package, a screen at an extreme aspect - and you would rather ship pre-compensated artwork than a note telling the producer to adjust. Also steal the habit of expressing spacing as repeat counts when the person executing works by stepping a unit along rather than measuring a whole.
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