I have seen this request before on Museum-L and the fact is that no one seems
to actually HAVE such a manual - even quite large or well-established museums.
There is a considerable body of research by Bitgood, Shettel and several others
on the subject and, over the past year, I have spent a considerable amount of
time looking at labels in various institutions in Canada, USA, Australia and
NZ, and taking photos of the best and worst examples I could find. I have
always been particularly concerned about labels and signage as I have retinitis
pigmentosa, and have virtually no low-light vision and a visual field of only
15 degrees in either eye (and I'll bet all you people out there who know me
just thought I was clumsy and dumb!). Also, I'm easily bored.

Among the best examples, in my humble opinion,:

- the new state history museum in Raleigh NC which uses very attractive labels,
limited text, clean and attractive fonts and a colour combination of cranberry
on cream.
- the backlit amber on black 3 stage labels of the Canadian Museum of
Civilization, some of which have backlit copies of historical paintings
attached
- excellent outdoor labels and maps at an interesting natural history park in
Victoria,to which David Demant of Scienceworks took me last November. Perhaps
one of the blokes from Oz can help me remember the names
-labels at the wonderful Walters in Baltimore, one of only two art
galleries/museums I've seen where the label writers had a sense of humour! As
far as I'm concerned,it had precisely the kinds and amount of information I
like in an art museum.

Among the worst,

- a western Canadian museum and a midwestern US art gallery, (both of which I
decline to name), where exhibitions were introduced by, in one case, 3 and in
the other, 5, huge text panels which no one reads - with later labels of the
same quality
- a NZ museum which used a colour scheme of black on dark royal blue, with what
appeared to be 12 point Times Roman font.
- Fort Ticonderoga.

Some colour schemes work very well - dark forest green on pale sand, or dark
blue on pale grey (or the reverse of each). The secret, for people like me who
are almost legally blind, is good contrast, low glare and simple, but
attractive and readable fonts. Fonts with minimal seriphs seem to appeal to
most folks. I agree with Steve Bitgood and others who say that no label should
have more than 70 words and 50 is probably better. I like the idea of large
bold letters for the title; a second line with bold smaller titles containing a
sentence of text and then a third line or two or three of regular face text to
give those who want to dive down to a third level of information a bit more.
This gives the visitor a choice of up to 3 levels of info.

Harry Needham
Canadian War Museum