subject: The Letters Would Need To Be 20" Tall [print this page] The maximum acceptable distance is 50' per 1" of letter height. In other words, if you will be standing 150 feet away from a street level sign, the letters need to be 6" tall using the conservative recommended rule of thumb. Should your sign be located on a highway, 600 feet from vehicles passing at 55 mph, the letters would need to be 20" tall. Beyond the height of the letters, it is important to consider the number of lines of text and the number of letters that will fit across the width of the display area. This will determine whether your audience will be able to read your entire message before passing by. Not to worry. The LED Pixel Matrix is designed to tell you what you need to know.An LED Pixel Matrix indicates how many rows of text your sign will display and how many characters will fit across the display area. Pixel Matrix is determined by multiplying the number of pixels vertically by the number of pixels horizontally. For instance, a Pixel Matrix of 16x80 means the display area consists of 16 vertical rows of pixels and 80 horizontal rows.The number of vertical rows will determine the number of lines of text your sign will displaysign boards . An LED display requires 7 pixels x 5 pixels to display Standard English characters. For multiple lines of text, an eighth row is required to separate the lines. Therefore, an LED sign with 16 pixel rows will display 2 lines of text, a sign with 24 pixel rows will display 3 lines of text, 32 pixel rows will display 4 lines, and so on.Equally important are the number of characters that will be displayed across the sign at one time. Six pixel columns are required to display each Standard English character. A sign with 64 pixel columns will display 10 characters across, 80 pixel columns will display 13 characters, etc.To sum it all up, KC McCay, a Senior Product Manager for a leading national LED sign distributor, states "I'd make one big recommendation...The most critical thing that people are not understanding is letters, lines, and the number of letters per line. The primary goal is to get messages out. One or two lines of 8 letters per line is not enough. You need a minimum of 3 lines of the most appropriate letter size...with a minimum of 14 characters per line. Most local and several national companies are selling 1 and 2 line limited LED signs...and people don't realize that they are getting ripped off."
