Real-Life Math
You hang up the telephone after talking to a client.
This person wants a fairly simple job, not like the Harley-Davidson logo you
put on a gold tooth for a dentist the other week. All she wants is a sign
saying, "Now Hiring Students." She wants the words to be on 3 lines, so the
sign would read:
Now
Hiring
Students
And
she wants the letters to be about 6 inches high.
After giving you this
information, she asks you how much it will cost her. In order to figure the
cost out, you first need to figure out how much wood you will need for this
sign.
You grab a pencil and start figuring. You usually leave 3/4 of
letter height between the lines of print. The space at the top and the bottom
of the sign is usually the same as the letter height. You also generally leave
10 percent of the longest line on both sides of the sign. This makes a frame
around the words.
Sometimes you leave a slightly larger space at the
bottom of the sign. This makes the text seem more centered. When you leave
the same amount of space at the top and bottom of the sign, because of the
capital letters at the start of each word, the letters don't seem quite centered,
even though they are. You decide this sign doesn't need the extra space at
the bottom -- or if it does, you will take a tiny bit from the top.
In
addition, the width of the letters is approximately 1.5 times their height.
This allows for both the letter itself and the spacing between the letters.