Learn how to protect your exterior signs from storm damage with practical tips on inspections, maintenance, durable materials, and timely repairs.
Continue readingDon’t Wait Until Your Sign Becomes a Liability.
Refresh Your Signs This Spring
New England winters can be tough on exterior signage. Snow, ice, wind, and salt often leave signs faded, damaged, or dim by the time spring arrives. A quick inspection now can help identify issues and ensure your storefront looks its best as foot traffic begins to increase.
Continue readingWhat Makes A Sign ADA Compliant?
The font must be readable from a distance and have no strange or unrecognizable characters. It must also be in all uppercase except for visual-only signs, such as directories, directional signs, or overhead signs. Some fonts that meet the guidelines are, Helvetica, Futura, Eras, Trebuchet, Verdana, Vag Rounded, and Franklin Gothic. You are not limited to these fonts, however, most sans-serif fonts will do as long as they comply with the guidelines set forth by the ADA. Get in touch with us today to learn more about how to choose fonts to match your brand for ADA signage.
The color should “pop” and be easily readable from a distance. A dark background and white lettering would be ideal in most situations.
Certain signs must have braille on them to be considered ADA compliant. We have the ability to add customized braille to any sign to make it compliant. Some signs that do not require braille are building addresses, directories, parking signs, and temporary signs.
Benefits of Using 3M Window Applications
The benefits of using 3M Window Applications go way beyond simple decorative purposes. For instance, 3M window applications help control sunlight as well as preserving energy. They can even assist and fortifying automobile and building windows against damage and forced entry. Let’s take a closer look at what makes 3M window applications much more beneficial than just attractive signage.
3M Window Applications can reduce temperatures from sunlight by up to 16 degrees. Not only do they reduce temperates, but they can reduce your heating and cooling bills up to 10%. Window films have become so widely accepted and believed to be effective, by utility companies, that they now rebate them.
An evaluation was conducted in 2011 by the Department of Energy (DOE) and it was found that window applications were among the top 50 solutions regarding ROI, success rate and overall energy savings.
3M Window Applications can act as a security enhancement
Get Started Early with Holiday Signage and Christmas Signs
With the start of the holiday season upon us, it’s time to start thinking about your Christmas signage and promotional POS campaigns!
When you’re out shopping during the holidays, what’s the first thing you notice? The holiday signs! More people look at signs during the holiday season than any other time of the year. Holiday signage can:
- Be warm and inviting; extending customers time in your store!
- Make the shopping experience easier for your customers by directing them where to go.
From store hours to decorative signage, to pricing and everything in-between, it’s really important to create a visually striking display in order to capture your customers’ attention and make a seamless experience.
Ordering your holiday signage now will help you beat the Christmas rush and allow you to be creative or try some unconventional ideas. Don’t wait to the last minute! Installing your signage early will allow you to gain excitement and anticipation by advertising in advance. Promote new holiday products, Christmas sale items, and create a seasonal ambience with custom holiday decoration. The following Christmas sign tips will help you prepare for your best holiday season yet.
- Catch Their Eye!
If you have window space, take advantage of it. Not everyone does, so you’ll be sure to stand out; whether it’s graphic decals made from vinyl or a holiday display. - Give Direction!
Have a great deal on an item? Let people know where to find it. Using vinyl floor decals is a terrific way to use previously unused space; as if to say, “This way to bargains!” - Get Emotional!
Customers love to reminisce about family traditions. Use images or phrases that will help spark these positive emotions. Additionally, emotions have been shown to help drive sales. - Go 3-Dimensional!
Use custom cut-out signage to add dimension to your business and signage as a whole. It’s different, eye-catching, and will be sure to turn your customers’ heads. - Brand Yourself!
Continue the use of your brand by using consistent colors and fonts. Customers will remember your brand, even after the holidays have ended.
This year, holiday sales could reach as much as $720.89 billion.* Don’t let ordinary signage cost you potential profit this year; Spectrum Signs can help. Get started today!
What is Color Matching?
Making sure that your specifically chosen color is represented throughout your marketing efforts accurately is paramount to your business’ success. If you find yourself asking, “what is color matching?” then don’t fear because Spectrum Signs is here to help you understand the basics.
There are two environments where color is used in a design. The color space that the design is made in will heavily influence what the output of the color is. The two color spaces are RGB and CMYK. If you were to try and design a printed piece in an RGB color space the colors represented on your screen will be very different from what is printed. The software and printer will handle the conversion of those colors, but, it’s likely that most of the colors, especially blues, purples, and pinks, will be inaccurate. RGB is used for designing online marketing materials like web banner ads or images for email marketing campaigns. CMYK is used for printed materials like vinyl banners, vehicle wraps, routed signs, and other unique printed projects.
To expand on this further let’s discuss how different mediums display color. Monitors like your TVs, smart devices, and computer monitors display color in an RGB color space. That means they use red, green, and blue light to display all color by mixing those three colors in different levels to output a single color. We can see this in any of the Adobe programs such as InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator. If you look at the RGB Color Space Box you’ll see that we get red by putting the largest value we can (255) in the R box which seems pretty simple and then leaving G and B both at 0.
When you’re designing for something that’s meant to be printed you’ll need to make sure you’re working in a CMYK color space. CMYK stands for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. The reason you need to work in CMYK is that all printers use these color inks to produce a single color specifically, from the small desktop printers in your home office to the large Epson printers here at Spectrum Signs. If you look at the CMYK Color Space Box you’ll see we get the same color red by mixing two colors together (Magenta and Yellow) and leaving cyan and black at 0. The machines we have at Spectrum Signs are also equipped to print white ink which is helpful in layering a backing layer of ink to make colors pop, printing on dark substrates and items, and printing on glass.
A common problem when designing is that you’re viewing your CMYK colors in an RGB color space when you look at your monitor. Sometimes, the conversion between visual displays and printers will misinterpret a blue color as purple and without adjusting for that or working with a printer that knows to look for those common problems it could be decremental to your finished project. When you’re previewing what your printed project looks like, if you’re looking at it on a screen, it won’t be 100% accurate to what it looks like printed. The reason is that the mediums are too different to match completely and also because no two monitors use the same color settings. If you were to purchase two monitors from the same manufacturer and set them up side by side you’ll see that that the colors won’t match up 100% between the two of them. Something that can be done to adjust for that is called color calibration. Calibrating the color on your screen is important to proof properly or at least as close as you can to have a sense of what you’re looking at. This is less important for when you’re using a PMS color in your project.
Sometimes a company will have a brand book or a set of branding guidelines that call for a very specific color or multiple colors to be used through all of their marketing efforts. Picking a PMS color can help with adding consistency to the brand which will help customers quickly identify your brand over time. This is extremely helpful when you’re making a billboard or any large sign that’s typically viewed from passing motorists where your message needs to be understood within seconds. When you can quickly let the viewer know who is selling to them by using color and other design techniques then you can spend more time introducing other concepts like sale information such as introducing a new product or outlining a week of discounted items. PMS stands for Pantone Matching System and the power behind it is in pre-printed books with color swatches that relate to a specific color. Pantone colors are associated with unique values like PANTONE P 112-13 C which has its own mix of RGB (50, 164, 213) and CYMK (70.81, 19.39, 4.32, 0), which, helps to determine colors before you start designing it in an RGB color space. When you pick a Pantone color to use, the color you see in the book is the one that will be produced by your printer.
When you use a Pantone color you are typically using a spot color. The Pantone color system is largely a standardized color reproduction system. By standardizing the colors, different manufacturers in different locations can all refer to the Pantone system to make sure colors match without direct contact with one another.[1] A process color is what is used when you’re designing with CMYK (four colors – Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black). When possible you should be using a spot color to make sure that the final color matches your selected color from your Pantone book. If you decide to convert the Pantone color to a process color there is a strong possibility that the color will be tints or shades off from what was originally selected, though, simulating the Pantone color is sometimes just as good. It all depends on budget and how accurate your final color needs to be to match your brand standards. Typically using spot colors adds extra cost to a printed job so weighing the balance between cost and accuracy is an important decision that will need to be made when designing.
It’s not always enough to depend on a Pantone color when printing your materials. If your printed materials all exist on paper then selecting your color should be the last step in your color picking process. However, when you’re also adding color to acrylic signs, vehicle wraps, and vinyl banners working with a printer who can match these colors on unique substrates is key.
To match colors on different substrates we must first run a series of tests on each substrate. We’ll print the same color with a 5% increase in hue saturation in each direction away from the original source and then manually compare the color against the sample from our Pantone book or from what’s been supplied to us by our clients. Once we’ve matched the color by adjusting the values of CMYK we can begin to create your new sign, vehicle wrap, or CNC routed sign.
Getting your colors to match throughout all of your marketing materials is tricky, to say the least. Luckily, Spectrum Signs can help guide you through matching your color to each of your printed projects. Call us today to get started!
How Effective Are Signs?
With a plethora of different mediums the current business owner has at their disposal for marketing their business, you may be thinking, how effective are signs? Sure, it seems like a common thing that every business has, but, how effective is it at reaching new customers. The simple answer is that signs make it easier for potential customers to obtain the information they need to make a purchase.
Signage that’s been designed with the consumer in mind will foster the growth of your business over time 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Exterior signage and interior signage are two easy and undeniable factors for increasing how many new customers are visiting your business and also how much they are spending at your place of business. Almost half of the people surveyed in this report stated that they learned about the company through on-premise signs while only a third of people hear about new business through family, friends, and colleagues and increasingly less through newspaper, phone books, radio, and television ads.
The bottom line is it makes you more money over time. About 8 in 10 consumers enter a store or a place of business they have never visited before because of the signage. Exterior signage is a great way to introduce yourself to new potential customers and doing it the right way can lead to big increases in your bottom line. Signs also advertise for your business 24/7. Consider a new vehicle wrap for the vehicle used for your business. It could be a truck, car, van, pickup, snowmobile, motorcycle, you name it!
68% of consumers understand that a business’ signage reflects the quality of its products or services. If your signage is old or out of date then it could be a decrement to your business. The first thing people see is your signage and that’s when they start to make assumptions about what your business is about before learning anything about you. It’s likely that a new potential customer will have already formed an opinion on your business before you can make that sale or offer your free lunch program card to them.
It’s even worse for businesses that don’t have signage. 60% of consumers said that the absence of signs deters them from entering a business. Trepidation is apparent for customers when they’re unsure of something. Maybe it’s a feeling of unease when they’re making a big purchase decision or maybe they don’t know if the what they’re looking at will ruin their diet, but, when they don’t know what they’re walking into it’s likely they won’t be adventurous enough to find out on their own and instead they will default to something familiar and reliable. If you are a new business owner those feelings of familiarity and comfort must be conveyed through the design and presentation of your sign.
Finally, half of all consumers stated that poor signage, meaning of poor quality or deteriorating signage or having misspelled words, will deter them from entering a place of business. Make sure that you’re working with a professional signage company that can handle your order and that will go through multiple checks of your sign before it’s out and door and delivered to you. Spectrum Signs is a 3M certified signage company which means you’re only getting the best quality products and also working with 3M certified installers. Let us take care of the details so that you don’t have to.
The bottom line, which is often considered the only thing that matters, is that good quality signage installed in the right places can increase your ROI. Just adding one additional sign on the premises of the business resulted in an increase in annual sales revenue os some business of 4.75% and increased the annual number of transactions by 3.94%.
Spectrum Signs is qualified to create amazing signage for your business. Give us a call today to see how it’s all possible.
Simple Strategies for Effective Sign Use
Spectrum Signs is here to help you navigate the tricky waters of designing and implementing new signage for your business. These strategies for effective sign use will help you maximize profits by attracting the attention of new customers.
Picking a compelling color can be tricky. The color of your sign should be compelling enough to attract attention without competing with your brand’s color scheme. The colors in your sign should “stand the test of time”. Modern colors and color pallets might be attractive now and make sense for the short term, but, if your sign is being designed to stay up for as long as your business does then those modern colors will eventually be outdated making it look like your business is unaware of current trends. Strong, solid colors normally work best and if you want to explore why color is important for your brand then check out this post.
A dark color on a light background or vice versa would be the best option in almost every situation. Legibility and readability are key when designing your signage. The sign needs to be legible from a distance and often needs to have all of the information on the sign conveyed in a very short amount of time especially if the average viewer is seeing it from their car as they’re driving past it. If your sign is black then all of or most of your text should be white or a bright color that matches your branding and if you have a white background then the best option for legibility would be rich black (if it’s printed) or a very dark color that matches or compliments your branding.
While imagery and colors are definitely important and can help convey emotion and personality the best thing you can do for your signage is have large text. All the color and imagery in the world won’t convey that you have a sale going on from this week to next week. Whatever your main focus is, make sure that it’s the biggest thing on the sign. Consider the hierarchy of information of what’s going on your sign. If the information being displayed is a sale going on for your business and you sell red coats then the biggest thing on that sign is going to be the dates of the sale with some text mentioning you have a sale going on, followed by your business name and logo, and then somewhere else on the sign will be that you sell red coats, which, for this example isn’t necessarily part of the sale, though does directly relate to the business. Consider what information is most important to your customer and make sure that’s conveyed in just a few seconds.
Where you place your signage can make all the difference in the world. Your beautifully designed sign with compelling colors, high contrast, and large text is useless if no one can see it. Consider placing smaller informational signs, such as wayfinding signs and POP signage, at eye level and your larger exterior building signs should be in an area that faces the most foot or vehicle traffic. Consider natural elements like trees and foliage where applicable. If your placing your signage in the winter months and the foliage around you is bare, come spring time you might start to notice that nature is covering up your signage. Interior sale signage should have a clear sightline with minimal clutter to help make the message clear.
While there are many factors to take into consideration when designing and implementing your signage Spectrum Signs makes it easy by offering intelligent design by our creative design staff and professional installation by our 3M certified installers. Get in touch with us today to find out how we can simplify the sign making process to give you better results and maximize your ROI.
Why Color Is Important To Your Brand
At Spectrum Signs, you’ll find that we not only know large format printing and signage installation, inside and out, we know design as well as why color is important to your brand. Color is important to you brand for a number of reasons. It’s important to use the right colors, for the right design or your message could be misunderstood.
Your brand’s colors are just as important as the design of your logo. People identify and associate colors with different types of brands. In fact, 80% of people think that color enhances a brand’s recognition. For instance, colors like red and yellow are often associated with fast food restaurants. By sticking with the colors that make up your brand, you increase your brand awareness and by the consistency in your use of color, associate those colors to your brand. Unsure of colors that will go together with your brand’s color palette? There are several online tools to help choose a color scheme (Coolors, Paletton &Color Wheel by Adobe are just three of the tools available online).
Just as colors associate with your brand, colors immediately resonate with people evoking emotions. For instance, a red sign can communicate extreme emotion – love, passion, anger, violence. On a sign, the color red tells someone to stop or serves as a warning. In a survey, 41% of people thought that red represented “fear” or “terror”. So, choosing your colors for your signage, as they relate to your brand, can be a tricky task.
As a general rule, it’s good to keep in mind the meaning and message of your sign and choose your colors wisely so that the color matches the meaning of the message. Avoid colors that are difficult on the eyes, as well as color combinations such as green on red and blue on orange, as they tend to “vibrate” and are difficult to read.
Every message has a target audience – the main group of people who will receive your message. Color plays a large role in relating a message to a particular audience. For example, men usually prefer bold, solid colors while women prefer softer, paler colors. Just as colors associate with emotions, they resonate differently with different groups of people: men, women, children, the elderly, etc. In fact, in a survey of both men and women, it was found in 53% of men and 35% of women that the color blue was the most popular. Knowing what colors these different groups of people prefer can help you to effectively reach them through a combination of the appropriate color and the right message.
It is not uncommon to see, within a brand, the use of “unconventional” colors – colors not usually associated with a particular industry or are not used frequently in design. Colors that fall into this range, but are not limited to, could include pale shades of yellow, pink, purple, brown and blue. These colors are unconventional in the sense that they aren’t commonly used as primary color schemes in everyday print collateral and signage.
Be careful with the use of these colors with your brand. Just because the use of an unconventional color scheme is trendy, make sure it makes sense to use with your brand and make sure those colors work with you brand’s colors. Using unconventional colors needs to make sense for your design and message. Make sure it’s use fits your brand and message.
As you can see, color is important to your brand – and while there are many factors to take into consideration when designing and implementing your signage, Spectrum Signs makes it easy by offering intelligent design by our creative design staff and professional installation by our 3M certified installers. Spectrum Signs is capable of providing color matching of your brand colors to your printed project and printed materials to make sure your carefully picked colors are consistent across all of your marketing efforts. Get in touch with us today to find out how we can simplify the sign making process to give you better results and maximize your ROI.
Wayfinding Signage: It’s More Than Just Arrows
You see and use it every day, whether it’s within an educational institution, healthcare facility, retail environment, sports venue, or numerous other places; but what is wayfinding signage? Wayfinding signage is an information sign system that helps visitors develop cognitive maps of the architectural environment. Specific locations, or spaces, are marked within an area to become more visible and better understood through memory.
There are four different categories of wayfinding signage and each category is important in its own right. Comprehensive wayfinding systems use multiple sign types as well as maps, symbols, and colors.
- Information Signage: Information signage supplies the visitors with useful information along the way, to help orientate visitors within a build environment. Listing hours of operations and reserved parking spot signage are just a few examples of how informational signage can be used.
- Directional Signage: Most people imagine directional signage when they hear the word wayfinding. These signs help users move toward their destination. Directional signs should appear around–and on the way to–the location.
- Identification Signage: Identification signage includes information about individual locations such as buildings or other landmarks. These signs let visitors know when they’ve arrived at their destination.
- Regulation Signage: These signs indicate the do’s and don’ts of a build environment. “No Smoking,” “Authorized Personnel Only,” fire escape routes, and speed limit signs are all great examples of regulatory sign types.
If you’re considering a wayfinding signage system, know that Spectrum Signs can design your signs with your brand in mind. Our ability to fabricate fully ADA compliant custom branded wayfinding signage can make a huge aesthetic difference to your project. There should be consistency between your exterior and interior signage; and yes, it can be both functional and aesthetically pleasing! Anticipate every directional challenge a visitor might encounter with minimal signage. Determine hierarchy based upon pathways, destinations, and key decision points. When it comes to design choices, you should think about materials, colors, hardware, sizes, shapes, typography, layout, and mounting style.
If you already have a wayfinding signage system and have been hearing visitors say things such as, “I had a hard time finding you,” or if you’re undergoing a renovation or expansion–it may time to improve your wayfinding signage. If you’re building new construction, Spectrum Signs can help you with your ADA compliant signage needs.
Contact Spectrum Signs regarding wayfinding signage and learn how we can help you!