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The Right Sign for Your Business

April 29, 2023

Suc­cess­ful sig­nage involves more than cre­at­ing an attrac­tive arrange­ment of logos and slo­gans. It is also a blend­ing of com­plex ele­ments such as mar­ket­ing, demo­graph­ics, an under­stand­ing of visu­al acu­ity, con­spicu­ity, and obliquity.

Suc­cess­ful sig­nage involves more than cre­at­ing an attrac­tive arrange­ment of logos and slo­gans. It is also a blend­ing of com­plex ele­ments such as mar­ket­ing, demo­graph­ics, an under­stand­ing of visu­al acu­ity, con­spicu­ity, and obliq­ui­ty. Com­pli­cat­ing the task is the fact that the read­er is usu­al­ly mov­ing, and the sign must be seen, read and under­stood in an instant.

In our high­ly com­pet­i­tive and media-rich world, an invest­ment in pro­fes­sion­al sign design is worth­while. Trained design­ers under­stand how to get the con­sumer’s atten­tion. Most impor­tant­ly, they know how to get the con­sumer to respond.

Remem­ber, every major chain that exists today start­ed out as a small busi­ness. Your long-term suc­cess can be shaped by the effec­tive­ness of your street pres­ence if it is pro­fes­sion­al­ly designed from the very beginning.

Ele­ments of Good Signage

How well a sign works for your busi­ness depends in large part on how easy it is for peo­ple dri­ving by to see and read it. Fol­low­ing is a step-by-step guide for mak­ing sure your sign can be seen and read in time for poten­tial cus­tomers to react and stop at your business.

Sig­nage Placement

ISA Table 4 Horiz 500

Table 4 shows what researchers learned about how far a car at dif­fer­ent speeds will trav­el from the time a dri­ver first sees the sign until the car safe­ly comes to a stop. This assumes the sign is mount­ed per­pen­dic­u­lar to the road­way and includes the amount of dis­tance need­ed to read a typ­i­cal sign and make a deci­sion to stop.

If the sign is mount­ed on the front of the build­ing par­al­lel to the road­way, research shows it needs to be at least 70% larg­er than the sign mount­ed per­pen­dic­u­lar to the road­way, or it can­not be read in time. Note that if a sign has unfa­mil­iar words or lots of words, it will also take longer to read.

Sign Size

Denver Health Channel Letters Close Upsm 500

Assum­ing the sign can be seen, the next step is to fig­ure out how large the let­ters on your sign need to be so that your mes­sage can be read.

Experts rec­om­mend design­ing signs with let­ters a min­i­mum of one-inch tall for every twen­ty-five feet of dis­tance. This makes them read­able for all legal dri­vers. Note that if your sign is using fan­cy let­ter­ing that is more dif­fi­cult to read, the min­i­mum let­ter size must be increased significantly.

Most busi­ness­es are not going to be well served by a small, plain sign with no graph­ics. The let­ter­ing style, the abil­i­ty of graph­ics and logos to be eas­i­ly rec­og­nized, whether or not the words on the sign are famil­iar and easy to read, the light­ing meth­ods used, and even the col­ors used all impact peo­ple’s abil­i­ty to see and read a sign.

Height of Sign

ISA Table 5vertical500

Now that you know where your sign will be placed and how large it needs to be the next ques­tion is how tall the sign needs to be. The fur­ther away the sign will be read, and the fur­ther it is from the road, the taller the sign must be to be vis­i­ble from a car. Free­way signs intend­ed to be read from great dis­tances should be very tall; signs locat­ed in a busi­ness dis­trict with 30 mph traf­fic only need to be tall enough that parked and mov­ing vehi­cles will not block them from view.

Although the length and con­tent of a sign’s mes­sage gen­er­al­ly dic­tates the over­all sign dimen­sions, Table 5 sets out gen­er­al­ly accept­ed sign height guide­lines. They assume that the sign is mount­ed per­pen­dic­u­lar to the road­way, that the size of the let­ters meets the min­i­mum size stan­dards list­ed in Table 4, and that the sign is mount­ed with­in 5 – 10 feet of the near­est edge of the pub­lic right-of-way. Note that although the table lists heights mea­sured to the top of the sign face, the height from the ground to the bot­tom of the face should always mea­sure a min­i­mum of 7 feet so the sign is not blocked from view by pass­ing or parked vehicles.

Sig­nage Illumination

Graham Surgery 500x400

Light­ing is essen­tial for most sig­nage. It allows your sign to be vis­i­ble and read­able day and night, in all kinds of weath­er. When a sign is illu­mi­nat­ed, dri­vers can read it more quick­ly. Anoth­er ben­e­fit of an illu­mi­nat­ed sign is that 24-hours a day it is adver­tis­ing your busi­ness. Even when your busi­ness is closed, that con­stant reminder helps build mem­o­ry of your business.

A wide vari­ety of illu­mi­na­tion meth­ods are avail­able, and rapid­ly devel­op­ing tech­nol­o­gy is cre­at­ing a vir­tu­al­ly unlim­it­ed vari­ety of pos­si­bil­i­ties, many of which are very eco­nom­i­cal to install and main­tain, as well as being energy-efficient.

When you select the col­or scheme for your busi­ness, you should con­sid­er your sign’s illu­mi­na­tion options at the same time, because the illu­mi­na­tion you choose can have an effect on the sign’s appear­ance. Some busi­ness­es want their sign’s col­ors to match their print and oth­er media adver­tis­ing exact­ly. Some forms of illu­mi­na­tion are much bet­ter than oth­ers at accu­rate­ly dis­play­ing color.

A prop­er­ly light­ed sign should be bright enough that it can com­pete with oth­er signs in the area with­out being annoy­ing. Many cities are begin­ning to impose lim­its on bright­ness, so before design­ing a sign you should check to see what those lim­its might be to deter­mine whether your sign will be vis­i­ble at night.

Not sure where to start? Find an expert now.