Arrow Sign

This sign template directs the viewer to a location of interest with a large solid arrow and big bold text. The arrow can point left or right and extensive color customization is possible to tailor the sign to the situation.

Description

This sign template directs the viewer to a location of interest with a large solid arrow and big bold text. A stylish border inside the arrow serves to further highlight the text. The arrow can point left or right and the colors of the arrow background and text/outline can be set independently. This allows you to tailor the sign to the situation, for example, parking signs are usually in a light blue with white text, while outdoor signs have a brown background. The text size can be easily changed and should be large enough to immediately stand out but maintain some padding for breathing space. Multiple signs can be easily produced in one document with a single command per sign which specifies all possible sign options.

Preview

Authorship

This template was created by Vel and designed by Candrika Pujnadati.

Current Version

v1.0 (March 17, 2022)

License

This template is licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. Click here to see what this license means for your use of the template.

Usage Guide

Compilation

This template needs to be compiled with XeLaTeX due to the custom fonts it uses. It contains a line in the header that should make this happen automatically, but if it doesn’t for you, set your LaTeX editor to compile with XeLaTeX each time you open the template. Alternatively, if you compile via the command line, use the xelatex command instead of pdflatex.

Sign Creation Command

A single command is used to create each sign: \signarrow. This command can be used any number of times in the template and each use will output a new sign on a separate page. The command takes 5 arguments as follows:

The sign text. This is automatically capitalized. You can use \\ to manually add line breaks.
The font size. This should be scaled such that the sign text fits in the arrow with a little padding for breathing space. Generally, the longer the text, the smaller the font size.
The background color of the arrow. Can be a standard color such as Green, an svgnames color or a custom color defined in the SIGN COLORS block in the template.
The text and inner arrow color. Can be a standard color such as Green, an svgnames color or a custom color defined in the SIGN COLORS block in the template.
The direction of the sign. Should be left or right.

Sign Colors

You have a number of options for the colors you specify for each sign. In the simplest case, you can specify standard colors such as Red, Black, Green and so on. You can also specify svgnames colors such as NavyBlue, SeaGreen and SteelBlue. See here for a full list of svgnames colors available. Finally, you can specify a custom color in the SIGN COLORS block at the top of the template. This lets you specify a color name and set it to use RGB, HTML or CMYK values as needed. You can then use this custom name in the \signarrow command. You can change the opacity of colors by adding an exclamation mark with a number after it, for example, black!50 is a 50% opacity of pure black, i.e. a medium grey.