Signs and signals
Most shops in Project Waldberg have homemade signs. They add a personal flavour to the city. The signs were made with Adobe Illustrator and printed with a normal, but good, colour printer. The same technique was used to create traffic signs, signals and many other signs. Take a look at the depot, where all signs were made in this way
Adobe Illustrator is a professional drawing program that is used for making vector based artwork. It allows you to work very exactly and to edit all objects easily. I use a HP Deskjet 980 cxi as a printer. It is just a normal office colour printer with a high resolution. The quality of the paper determines the quality of the output to a large extent. That's why I use only special matte inkjet paper. The result is an impressive high quality printout.
A sharp knife is all you need to cut the signs from the sheet. You can also glue a thin sheet of grey carton on the backside before cutting it to make a traffic sign for example. I made street signs and house number signs with this technique and each house now has its own unique number.
The paper can best be glued with ordinary multipurpose glue. Just apply the glue, press it and your sign is finished. A pair of pincers might come in handy when you are working with very small pieces of paper. I made a number of ready to print sheets, which you can download here. You can best print them in Adobe Photoshop or a similar program. Print at half (50%) size for H0 scale.
Opschriften 1.jpg (240 kb) German depot and industry signs
Opschriften 2.jpg (204 kb) German track signs and signals
Opschriften 3.jpg (260 kb) German track signals and city signing
Opschriften 4.jpg (296 kb) German station signs
Opschriften 5.jpg (268 kb) German traffic signs
Opschriften 6.jpg (240 kb) Various international commercial posters
But... it can be even easier and better. I have had the original vector files plus a few new ones printed on a professionial photo printer. These prints are of higher quality than the average colour printer produces. They also do not fade in the sunlight. The prints are available in the shop.
2002, 2008, 2013