Lettering and Poster Making Honor

The Lettering and Poster Making honor teaches Pathfinders to do by hand what every club needs almost every week: the bulletin board notice, the welcome sign, the event poster that has to be read by someone hurrying down the church hallway.

The complete Lettering and Poster Making honor requirements are in the catalog (code HM-007, listed there as the Signs and Posters honor) and are summarized here, with no answer key. The knowledge comes from Encyclopaedia Britannica, the W3C, the U.S. ADA standards, Nielsen Norman Group and the scientific journal Vision Research, checked on October 6, 2026.

🖍️What is the Lettering and Poster Making honor, and what are the requirements?

The Lettering and Poster Making honor has the code HM-007, belongs to the Arts and Crafts area and is skill level 2. According to the catalog, it was created in 1933 by the General Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. In Brazil it is called Letreiros e Cartazes, the Desbravai catalog lists it in English as the Signs and Posters honor, and it is one of the arts and crafts honors.

Only requirement 3 is theory: stating principles of an attractive poster. The other five are hands-on: writing and practicing the alphabet, demonstrating letters and markers, and producing at least 8 posters. It suits Pathfinders who like to draw or who look after the church bulletin board, and it needs few materials: paper, a pencil, a ruler and markers.

Summary of the Desbravai catalog (HM-007), with no answers.

🏛️Where does the poster come from? A story of stone, ink and paper

According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, Gothic lettering served European manuscripts from the late 12th century to the 20th century, and Johannes Gutenberg used it to print the 42-line Bible, completed around 1455. Today it survives on diplomas and newspaper mastheads. The modern poster emerged around 1860, driven by lithography, which Alois Senefelder discovered in 1798 using a stone plate (lithos is Greek for stone) and which made color posters affordable.

Jules Chéret, the first of the great modern poster artists in Britannica's view, debuted in 1867 with a theater poster; the 1890s brought Toulouse-Lautrec and Alphonse Mucha. The encyclopedia's definition fits the church bulletin board too: a poster has to grab the attention of passersby instantly.

🔤Which fonts for posters does the honor ask for?

Requirement 1 asks for the complete alphabet in 2 of 6 typefaces. The list mixes Gothic and italic, two of the three great styles of Western printing according to Britannica (the third is roman, the family of Times New Roman), with digital fonts whose origins Microsoft documents. Italic debuted as a text type in small books because it saved space: its first notable use was a 1501 Virgil, with type by Francesco Griffo for the printer Aldus Manutius in Venice.

Serifs are the small strokes at the ends of letter stems, like the ones on a lowercase n; typefaces without them are called sans-serif. Britannica's typography entry states that nearly all studies found running text without serifs less easy to read, but a controlled test by Aries Arditi and Jianna Cho (Vision Research, 2005), using fonts that differed only in their serifs, found no effect on reading speed and concluded that serifs alone do not change legibility; in small or distant text they may give a minimal gain, because of the extra space between letters. In a 2007 study, the same authors found that capital letters are recognized at smaller sizes than lowercase ones, because they are bigger; at large sizes, the difference in reading speed disappeared.

For requirement 1, a good pair is one serif style and one sans-serif style. To practice (requirement 6), draw three light pencil guidelines (baseline, x-height and cap height) and repeat look-alike letters in rows: b, d, p and q; n, m and h.

Sources: Encyclopaedia Britannica (Gothic and italic) and Microsoft Typography (other fonts).

📏What is the right font size for posters at each viewing distance?

The right font size for posters depends on the viewing distance. Table 703.5.5 of the U.S. accessibility standards (2010 ADA Standards), for characters between 1.02 m and 1.78 m (40 and 70 inches) above the floor, the height of a bulletin board, requires capitals at least 16 mm (5/8 inch) tall up to 1.83 m (72 inches) away, plus 3.2 mm (1/8 inch) for every additional 305 mm (1 foot). The standard covers building signs in the United States and carries no regulatory force for posters in Brazil: here it serves as the basis for a reference calculation.

The math becomes a rule of thumb: about 1 cm of capital height per meter, which matches the standard's 1/8 inch per foot. For reading at 5 m (about 16 feet), aim for at least 5 cm (2 inches), and make the title bigger. Nielsen Norman Group recommends no more than three sizes (title, subtitle and body text) and no more than two large elements.

The same ADA standard excludes italic, script and highly decorative characters from signs and asks for a stroke width of 10% to 30% of the letter height, spacing between letters (kerning) of 10% to 35%, and leading, measured baseline to baseline, of 135% to 170% of the letter height. On a poster, save Gothic and italic for short titles; date, time and place go in plain letters.

Paper limits the letters. Under the ISO 216 standard, an A0 sheet measures 1 m² and each following size is half the previous one: A3 is 297 × 420 mm and A4 is 210 × 297 mm. For a hallway poster, choose A3 or larger. On an A3 sheet read from 3 m, for example, the calculation calls for capitals of at least 2.8 cm in the body text, and the title goes bigger.

Desbravai reference calculation based on sections 703.5.5 and 703.5.7 of the 2010 ADA Standards (a U.S. standard for signs, with no regulatory force in Brazil).

🖊️Which markers should you use for posters and signs?

Requirement 2 asks you to demonstrate letters and markers, and the tip should match the stroke in the previous table. Markers come with a round tip or a chisel tip, cut at an angle. Pilot states that the Pincel Atômico, which it launched in Brazil in 1958, has a felt chisel tip that writes in widths such as 2 mm, 4.5 mm and 8 mm.

Using the same reference calculation (a stroke of 10% to 30% of the letter height, as in the ADA standard), an 8 mm stroke suits letters 2.7 to 8 cm tall; a 4.5 mm stroke, letters 1.5 to 4.5 cm; a 2 mm stroke, letters 0.7 to 2 cm.

For the guidelines, use a soft pencil, a long ruler and an eraser that does not smudge. According to the manufacturer, Pincel Atômico ink is permanent and alcohol-based; before the final poster, test the marker on a scrap of the same paper to see whether it bleeds or soaks through.

🎨What makes a good poster?

Requirement 3 asks for 4 principles of an attractive poster, and the starting point is visual hierarchy. Nielsen Norman Group defines it as the organization of elements so that the eye moves through them in the intended order of importance. It is built with color and contrast, scale, and grouping, which keeps related items together and separates the rest with white space.

The same company suggests, for simple pieces, no more than 2 primary colors and 2 secondary ones, and notes that the element with the most space around it gets the most attention. Do not rely on color alone: the most common type of color blindness, according to the U.S. National Eye Institute, makes it hard to tell red from green.

Contrast can be measured. WCAG 2.2, from the W3C, uses a scale from 1:1 to 21:1 and asks for 4.5:1 for regular text, a value chosen to compensate for 20/40 vision, typical at around age 80. The guidelines were written for digital content and do not regulate posters; the table below uses their formula only as a reference calculation.

The prophet Habakkuk received an instruction that works as a goal for every poster: "Write the vision and make it plain on tablets, that he may run who reads it" (Habakkuk 2:2, NKJV).

Desbravai reference calculation with the WCAG 2.2 relative luminance formula (a digital guideline, with no regulatory force for posters), using pure screen colors (sRGB): yellow #FFFF00, blue #0000FF, dark green #008000, red #FF0000, orange #FFA500.

📣How do you make a church poster for church and Pathfinder Club events?

Requirements 4 and 5 add up to at least 8 posters. Start with the content: what is happening, when, where, who is organizing it and how to learn more. Long text belongs in the church bulletin. Make three small sketches, pick the best one, draw the guidelines and only then use ink.

Once the poster is done, hang it 5 m away and check whether the date and place can be read. Then squint, a test that Nielsen Norman Group says is taught in design schools: the title should still stand out first.

Use the club's real calendar, such as an honors fair or an event planned with event project management. Outdoors, each city's law applies. One Brazilian example: in São Paulo, the Clean City Law (Lei Cidade Limpa, Municipal Law No. 14,223/2006) bans, in its article 9, placing advertisements on utility poles, trees, squares and walls, among other places. Check with city hall before putting up a poster outside the church.

The most common mistakes are letters too small for the distance, too many fonts and colors, text crammed against the edge and key information in decorative lettering. A Lettering and Poster Making honor answer key is no shortcut, because the instructor evaluates the alphabet and the posters you produce yourself: see what honor answer keys cannot replace and who can teach and sign off honors.

Next, move on to the Lettering honor, created by the South American Division (SAD) in 2025 according to the catalog, or to Photography. Before you start, check the complete Lettering and Poster Making honor requirements.