I saw a sign like this in front of an Aldo shoe store on my way home from work today. I figured it was set up that way because the store had relatively narrow windows and they wanted the sign to be in as large a font as possible. I haven't been able to find a single image anywhere that matches, by way of design. But I couldn't help but think that there was more going on than just size constraints, and the sign itself was significantly effective mainly because I couldn't stop thinking about it for the rest of the way home (26 Street blocks and 1 Avenue later, or twenty minutes, depending on how you count and walk). I was taken with how the splitting of the word itself made it totally foreign, with the "Sa" whisper followed be a French-like "Le" which should technically be first to make any sort of sense. Or, it could be something like a broken sentence, cut of by the sheer notion of the thrill of thrift: "Sa--lut! Le ---temps est grand!" for instance. The possibilities seemed relatively endless.
Also, the switch from red to pink on the "L" seemed distinctly of note. The "l" in the word "sale" is the part that kind of pulls you into the word, the "ull" sound, if you will. By making it pink, it pulls that part out further, not to mention making it more characteristically pleasing to the feminine cliche. It was a subtle color-shift, but still noticeable enough from the window of the back of a bus as it passed at a normal clip. I imagine, if walking past, at a closer angle, it would have been more pronounced, and more prone to draw attention enough to signal a stop. Midway through an avenue, the bus wasn't going to stop for anybody, let alone a sale on shoes.
Regardless, it made me wish I needed a pair of new shoes.
