Style 14, the Sign. Round 3: the face made real

Round 2's background passed; the face still looked a little fake, with a lot of blank space. So the face now has what a real face has: retroreflective sheeting with its fine bead pattern, the sun's falloff across the panel, faint wear, bolt heads where the posts meet the panel, a vinyl edge on the type. The panel is filled the way a guide sign is: the line large, the note as its second line, the arrow at full size, and the Legacy icon set into the sheeting as a watermark, the way a sheeting maker's mark shows in raking light. The paragraph and you stay on the caption bar at the foot.

Dave's notes, applied: the watermark in the type's own color, twenty percent smaller and twenty percent stronger; the firm bold in the footer like the name, the credential and the phone regular. Then: the watermark smaller, in the corner with equal padding from both edges and never under text, a small favicon top-right on the market sign and under AHEAD on the diamond; road grime along the bottom edge and faint streaks under the top bolts; and the type given the photograph's own softness, since crisp vector type over a photo is what gives a composite away.

What to rule on. Whether the sign itself reads as real now. Pass or note by name. If it passes, the formats and the plate library follow.

The real face

**SF-green**The seller tip, green by day. The baseline: the line, the note as its second line, the arrow, the watermark in the sheeting.

**SF-white**A white regulatory face, black type.

**SF-market**The distance sign: this August 214, last August 210.

**SF-invite**The invitation on blue at dusk.

**SF-holiday**Thanksgiving on brown at dusk.