Sign-making fails at the practical end more often than the design end: the right sign printed floppy, smudged, or in a size that vanishes on the table. Ten minutes of print-craft fixes all of it.
A5 (two per sheet) is the workhorse — big enough to read from the aisle, small enough that four don't swallow the table. A6 (four per sheet) suits dense tables of small items and price-group labels sitting in front of baskets. A4 is for the signs doing shouting: the stall name, the hero offer, the end-of-day deal. A typical table wants one or two A4s, three or four A5s, and A6s as needed — more signage than that and the signs start competing with the stock.
Standard printer paper (80gsm) prints fine and stands never — fold it over card, mount it on cereal-box cardboard with a glue stick, or clip it to a stand. If your printer accepts it, 160–200gsm card prints signs that stand in an acrylic holder or against a mini easel without engineering. Above 220gsm most home printers jam; buy that stiffness as backing board instead of forcing it through the rollers.
One rain shower turns inkjet signs into watercolours. The stallholder's classic — sign inside a plastic wallet, wallet clipped or taped down — costs pence and works; a laminator (£20 supermarket variety) is the upgrade if fairs are becoming a habit. Wind is the other enemy: anything upright needs clipping to something weighted, and A6 cards want a dab of blu-tack each. This is why the packing list has tape, clips and spare signs on it.
Print at 100% scale ("actual size", not "fit to page" — fit-to-page shrinks your carefully sized type); portrait orientation; margins default; greyscale is fine and saves colour ink since good signs are mostly big dark type anyway. Print one test sheet, do the browsing-distance test, then run the batch — and print the spare set while the printer's warm.
General guidance, August 2026. CAAC.