Time for a little old school insight. There really is no "perfect sig" or even "perfect" way to go about it. The most important aspects to me are originality and continuity. For example, a certain font may look perfect with one design and then completely out of place on another design. The most important part is making sure the text, the background, and the images go together smoothly.
To me the " perfect sig" is impossible. Simply because everyone has a wide variety of opinions in what their personal preference is in style. I noticed during some of the Sig Contest, I was the only one who gave a certain sig a vote. That's because for my personal taste, it was the best.
Ok but each person has things that they look for when they are giving cnc to a sig...those things are what I'm looking to improve on...I know each person has different opinions but for the most part alot of people agree that a sig that is too cluttered don't look as good as a sig that is not.....
When YOU are laying out what you are going to put into a sig.What feel are YOU going for...Thats what I'm looking for....
I know that if everybody thought that the grunge sig was the best that is all we would get but I think that a general layout will be basically the same for all of them....
These are things I have been looking at myself.
1.A good render that will be the focal point to the sig...
2.Maybe a couple stocks that fit in well...
3.Decent blending and lighting..
4.A font that fits nicely...
Do you guys lay a sig out before making it or is that just somthing I do?? Maybe I'm too anal about stuff but I think if I can get a feel for what people LIKE I can maybe improve on those ideas and make them better.
The big thing is what is called flow. It's necessary that you sig flow from one side all the way to the other. It should have some continuity to it as well. That's not to say that there can't be some abruptness or high contrast, but it should flow together well.
If you will look at the tut I posted then that is the big reason for doing the adjustment layers. It will help you colors to flow together and the brightness to flow better.
With my sigs, sometimes they start with a render and sometimes they start with a background that I start to play around with. The best thing is after you get your render, go ahead and try to put your text in (not all sigs, but sometimes) that way the effects on your render and the lighting will be above your text as well.
I know that my old sigs had the render and the text as the two top layers in my sig a lot of times. Now they are generally at/towards the bottom or in the middle.
These are a few things that you can try and my ideas on stuff.
Well the cut of the render shouldn't even be a question. That can be fixed easily.
As for the BG, I am trying to learn not to think of it as a bg as much since that implies that it is behind everything else and if you think of the whole thing as a piece together, your sigs start to flow better IMO.
But anyway, yeah, the "background" is very important though.
i decide pretty much everything in my sig based on the render. the pose and size of the picture i use determines the flow, balance, and how much space i need to fill in the background, and if ill use text...or how big it will be. for me, everything revolves around the render. it is the foundation of my work. when i look at the picture, the background and overall layout will be become more clear and i move from there. stocks, lighting and text are all tools i use to improve a sig (finishing touches), but the layout is more important IMO.
So I guess the thing that you can figure out from this is that there is no right answer to your question. I don't disagree with anybody in this thread, but I have different ways that I do some things than others.
That's the beauty of it though. If there was a "right" answer to this question then I wouldn't be designing. Wouldn't be too much fun then.
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by boehlerking01 » Sun May 06, 2007 11:09 am 
