Mini-marks are the small pieces on the glass: Fresh Trade down the pillar, the inspection mark under it, a certified mark under the banner, a QR mark on the front door glass. The biggest, the Fresh Trade mark, is about 13½ inches long. They work when each one says a single thing a shopper can read in a glance.
A glance is three or four words
Traffic-sign research has long found that a glance takes in three or four short words. A banner’s headline gets that budget. A mini-mark gets less, so it gets one message: Fresh Trade. Not For Sale. Gold Certified.
The sizes
| Mark | Where it goes | Printed size |
|---|---|---|
| Fresh Trade | Down the passenger A-pillar | About 5 × 13.5 in |
| Awaiting inspection, Not For Sale, In reconditioning | Under the Fresh Trade mark | About 5 × 3 in |
| Certified (gold, silver, a third-party program) | Under the windshield banner | About 10.6 × 4.5 or 12 × 3.2 in |
| QR marks: the ShortCut, or a scan for reviews | The rear lower corner of the front door glass | About 3.5 × 6.7 or 5.5 × 5.5 in |
How they stack
On a used car the marks build a sequence from the top corner down. Fresh Trade goes on the day the car lands. The inspection mark sits under it until the car is ready for the front line, then it comes off. Each mark changes when the car’s status does, and nothing else on the glass has to.
Open space does the rest
Sign-industry guidance keeps lettering to about 40% of the face. On a piece five inches wide, that open space is the difference between a word that reads from the aisle and one that has to be read up close.
The whole set. Mini-marks and the complements that pair with a windshield banner, with their sizes.
Sources
Bullough, Illuminated Sign Conspicuity, Lighting Research Center (RPI) for the Sign Research Foundation: three or four words a glance, citing a 1965 review of traffic-sign research (p. 21).
United States Sign Council, Sign Legibility Rules of Thumb (Bertucci, 2006): lettering at about 40% of the face (pp. 8–9).
More Field Notes
-
New model years are landing
The model-year pieces we print for the fall, when two years of the same model share the row.
-
Three or four words
Why our windshield headlines stop at four words, and where the rest of the detail goes.