I'm just wondering what different people feel makes a sig good. What elements are important to you? What do you think is aesthetically pleasing? What do techniques mean for the sig? What about themes and the use of premade renders and brushes? I'm just curious about everyone's thoughts.

What makes a sig good? When people don't use grunge, tutorials, or "renders" to make their signatures.

I don't know what's wrong with renders, a lot of pro's use them, but stocks are good, even so I would say renders sigs are harder seeing as you don't have a pre made background.
For me a good sig is all about having the right composition and flow with just the hint of good lighting ;D.
I would also say over using the brush tool is not something I am familiar with I have actually only brushed about 5 of however many sigs I've done now, that's not including lighting and clipping masks. But im not saying brushing is a bad thing because you would be a noob not accept that its quite a use full tool, just I only use default brush's for painting now, and i really like smudgy flowy sigs.Everyone has their own style.
Brushing can be good and bad, Ive seen people who can really pull off good brushing...
Simple sigs is a whole other matter though, and that's including abstract..

I tend not to use renders any more.

But it really does depend upon how the artist uses the available resources. I mean, you could use some really rare resources, but come up with a pretty naf sig. And on the other foot, you could use really common renders and brushes, but make a really nice sig.

It depends upon the artist.

Well, it depends on what style of tag.
For example, in grunge I would recomend low lighting while in Abstract the opposite.
For what I think makes a tag good, check my Tag Fundementals.

I also tend not to use renders anymore but I use stocks. I think, overall, it makes the tag blend well.
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I like signatures to be beautiful. A lot of people seem only to cae about how many trickey effects the artist used, even though the signature itself may look horrendous. I usually don't like garish colours or sharp edges. I like soft, subtle signatures.

I think either a funny sig or a nice, beautiful sig are good. The colors have to go together unless it's meant to be clashy. Soft colors like blues and greens are always nice too. But, I can always go for bright colors as well as long as it's in the color scheme.

Lens flare. When brushes, renders, vectors, other filters, and all that other shmut fails, head for the almighty Lens Flare.

Lens flare has to blended just right though. I dont normally use them, as I use other methods for lighting.

im not a pro but im going to school for this...i think what makes a good sig is something that catches the persons attention without it being big or having alot of text in it.
ppl dont like reading text!
short and snappy

Whats a Stock and how are they better than a render?

A stock is a full photograph or picture, wheras a render is a cut out image of something.

They're not necessarily better, but you can do stuff with stocks that you can't with renders, and vice-versa.

Hahaha, a stock is a full photo. A render is a cut image.

And is answer to the original question stated by Arthryn, I make sigs good. Hahahaha! I jest of course.

Composition, symmetry, lighting, color and typography are the first things that come to mind. The focal is extremely important; if the tag is too crowded then it's an eyesore. A lot of people tend to cram tons of shiny effects into a 350-by-150 px tag in hope that it'll look impressive... nay. Balance and simplicity win in most cases.

And by the way, lens flare fails hard. It is easily the most abused filter in all of digital media and use of it will make you look incompetent to any veteran designer. Sorry, but it's the truth.

Lens flares do not "fail" at all, my current sig, the only lighting was cone with lens flares. They are only bad to an ignorant, without extensive experience, GRFX maker.

I disagree. There is a plethora of ways to paint with light in competent gfx programs other than slapping on three lens flares and changing the blending mode and/or lowering the opacity. I do not recommend relying on a filter to pull together a piece of work; it won't do you any favors in the long run.

You're assuming that all people do with lens flares is slap them on and change the blending option. There's more you can do with them than that, liquification and smudging can be effective lighting methods with lens flares.

Why use something so limited as a lens flare when you have methods that are much more effective? Lens flares are awkward and used mainly by everyday people who want to make their photographs look appealing without much effort. They aren't meant to be the cornerstone of a design. With smudging or liquify, I'd much rather work with an air brush or fractal than a lens flare.

I think it all depends on how the maker wants their grfx item look the way they want it. True that just a lens flare by itself does look not as advanced of skilled work, but that doesn't mean that they are completely worthless.

Yeah, I'm going to have to agree with KG and mtb. It doesn't really matter what you use on the sig, but rather how you use it. If you can use a lens flare and get a good effect with it, then that's great. If you'd rather use a different tool to get the same effect, that's cool too. With art it really doesn't matter so much what goes into it as it does what comes out of it, meaning your final result. Everybody has their own way of doing things, and that's what gives our graphics all their variety.

Lens flares actually don't give you the same effect as painting with light, but whatever. If you want to keep relying on the filter, then knock yourself out, but I suggest learning alternative, more versatile methods.

Lens flares are bad as a light source because they are either really obvious and throw the balance of a piece off, or they are so indiscernible that it appears as if your tag doesn't even have a light source. There are a few places where lens flares are fitting, and tags are not one of them, both due to their size and the effects used to create them. Try to blend a flare with a c4d and you'll likely end up with a distraction.

But hey, I know how protective designers can be of their work, so I really don't blame you guys.

You shouldn't JUST use a lens flare as your light source, this is true. There is sooo much you can do with them as in effects, but don't discredit them completely.

I'm only looking down on them as a means of lighting. You can do amazing things using lens flares in terms of effects (my favorite being chroming them ), but a lens flare by itself? No thanks.

Also, I'm guessing you use Gimp? Yeah, I'm a CS girl myself, so I really dunno what Gimp has available for use. Maybe Gimp flares have something more magical about them and I've just been wasting words.

I don't use lens flare.

I use Light source or airbrush.

Yeah, same here. I just wanted to defend the uses of lens flares. I think I might have a couple sigs that used lens flare, but I don't use it often. I can't even think of one where I had used it, actually....

I also use PS. I used to use GIMP though, and the lens flares are pretty much the same there too.

I am still sticking to my guns though.

Years of experience in graphical software such as Photoshop, and graphics technique and knowhow make a sig good.

You cannot get good overnight. Period.

Who said anything about just using them by themselves? In fact, we have said that just slapping a lens flare does generally look bad, but you just seem to have disregarded that.

As I said, you can use a lens flare to great effect through use of other effects after it. And yes, you can use it for a good lighting effect too. I'm perfectly aware that there are other methods of lighting, but as I said, lens flares have their uses.

I'm equally proficient in both PS and GIMP, and PS has far superior lens flares, GIMPs lens flares are almost useless, since they're less incandescent, and are more like low resolution pictures of lens flares, as opposed to light sources (light source is a totally different filter entirely, which adds shadow too, and completely screws the image quality). However, even that has a use if you wish to distort it.

As for the PS lens flare,I think you can get some pretty spectacular results if you know how to work them.

I think the overall appeal to a sig makes it good. It's a mix of everything, including the viewers personal perspective. I could hate someone's sig, and love someone else's based upon my opinion, whereas MotB might not like the same one I liked, and like the one I disliked. Although, I people generally agree with each other...

I find that there are alot of factors that make a sig "good". First of all the basic aspects: color, lighting, text, size, image use and all of those factors.
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But most of all be creative. Don't follow rules and tutorials. If you have a artmaking program for example: Photoshop, just practice out all of the different tools and eventually you'll get the hang of it and make your artwork great

When I make a sig, I ues renders or stocks depending on the way I want the sig to look. I think one of the ways to make sig look good is the text, if the text isnt good it will spoil the rest of the sig.

I appreciate almost anything I can't do. Other than that, a variation of minimalism is my constant companion.