Street Name Signs

[maxon]

It's completely typical of a simmer isn't it to be intending to make something else entirely and then end up with a set of street name signs?  I was doing some more work on shop signs, following up some ideas I had from doing the Victorian Shop Facade recolours, when I was distracted (sigh) by a sudden idea that I needed road signs for Little Carping.  So here they are - I actually made about 40 but I've selected 18 plus a 'Way Out' sign (based on a British Rail Way Out sign because who doesn't want one of those?) for upload.
   
I made them on AikeaGuinea's height adjustable wall painting which is shiftable so you can have them at a variety of heights on a wall (mesh included though it's a very common and useful piece of CC so you might have it already).  They are in simlish but the basic texture is based on a real British street sign.  You'd need to use moveobjects on to place it over other things also hung on walls.  The picture is found in Decorative>Wall Hangings and costs $45.  I also designed the texture so they'd sit on my exterior Victorian Pub Tile walls.
   
The names are as follows (l-r, top to bottom):
   
High Street; Station Road; Oak Avenue; Wood Lane; Sparrow Street; Lancaster Gate; School Lane; Market Street; Beech Road; Nonsuch Place (spelt with an 'e' but whatever); Beaumont Square; Church Lane; Richmond Road; Bridge Street; Park Avenue; Lark Rise; Lime Grove; Buckingham Road plus the Way Out there to the right.

The selection I made was based on what I thought the most common or generic-type names were - Little Carping has themes for it's neighbourhood roads including (British) trees, birds and vaguely aristocratic names, hence some of the names.  I'm going to add flower names next.  Incidentally, I included Sparrow Street because, although it's not common, it's my favourite road name in Little Carping (it's actually in Carping Magna - the shopping district). I could write an entire book about Sparrow Street...

I do sometimes wonder if I'm the only simmer that is bothered by this stuff.  I suspect no-one else has missed street name signs.

[LadySilverwolf]

I prefer simlish to english for most of my settings and would love to be able to name my roads.
I confess I love the names you have chosen, but a couple of questions if I may?

Which simlish font did you use here ?
Which program do you typically use to make your images?
I had a mind to do something like this, with street signs, for my hood, and was even considering making my own until I saw yours.

I would also come back here and share them of course, for anyone who would be interested, but it may be some time before I actually get them made. I seem to be very slow at getting things organized for all my hoods.

[maxon]

Sounds good - 

The font is SimlishFZ_SportySpice which is one of Franzilla's: http://modthesims.info/d/594285/sporty-s...fonts.html

I used point size 92, bold for most of the signs.  I had to jack up the kerning to fit in some of the longer names and there was at least one where I had to drop the point size to get it to fit.  I think it was only one of the ones I released where I did that.  

I usually use Paint Shop Pro for making stuff.  I am supposed to be using Photoshop because most people use that and I should really learn how (I can use it).  It does make following tutorials easier generally.  But I have used PSP for years and know where everything is and I'm afraid I revert to that all the time.  

If you're interested, I attach my working files here.  There are four things here:

1. 2 files which are the base textures to be imported into the recolour file in SimPE.  One is a PSP file with the layers preserved.  The other is the same thing saved as a Photoshop file - no idea if that will work but I could open it in Photoshop and the layers were there
2. An empty version of the sign (i.e. blank ready to have the words added)
3. A filled in version of the sign (Dunnock Mews - not included in the original upload) so you can line up the words to match if you want to.

The procedure is as follows:
1. Make a new sign with the blank graphic - i.e. add the road name
2. Shrink it to 25% (I always make textures larger to start with)
3. Layer that file into the base texture using the markings on the base texture to put it at the correct point on the texture.  That is you line up the bottom corners of the sign texture over the yellow and pink corner markings of the base texture - I've left the layered version in the file uploaded here so you can see what I mean.  When I did this, I designed it to fit on my Victorian tiled walls.  You don't need to do that of course though your graphic should fit inside the original poster graphic from AikeaGuinea's texture. I haven't checked the mapping, as it happens, but I think that's a reasonable precaution to get it to work as you want it. The original poster texture fits nicely in one wall panel.
4. Drop down to the base layer and delete the original poster - make sure you go close to the grey section before you cut because there's a shadow - you could just delete the whole layer of course though I think in Photoshop that runs the risk of the programme resizing the texture - i.e. I think the grey is there to keep the proportions of texture correct.
5. Go back to the top layer and add a drop shadow to the sign - to make the texture apparently stand out from the wall a little - 5 point offset vertically and horizontally, opacity 70% with a blur of 4 (not sure what that means but that's the setting in PSP)

For the words, I used an off-black - 39, 36, 41 RGB - not sure why those values exactly, probably just a random grab.

If you really like them, I could upload the other 20 or so that I did though the names are more closely connected to Little Carping.

[LadySilverwolf]

Awesome! thank you ever so much for sharing the resources! Just noticed your message on tumblr, and came here to reply!