Digitally displayed signs such as LEDs are all the rage these days because they’re versatile, changeable, affordable and allow for nighttime viewing (at a much cheaper price than neon).
For one, LED bulbs last for a long time. And by the nature of how they operate, will never dim in their lifespans. They also save power, which translates to saving money. Arguably the best aspect of digital signs is their restrictiveness and ability to make moving messages. With digital signs, the options are limitless!
Thus, many businesses in Greater Philadelphia in need of a sign company’s services ask us about going digital. While there are certainly many advantages to doing so, there are also some important factors to consider:
Placement Matters
This may sound obvious, but where you put the sign matters. Before you purchase a sign, audit your property and determine the best placement location—somewhere a lot of eyes will easily see it. Follow these steps to best placement practices to optimize on where you put the thing:
Accessibility is key
High traffic areas = great places for your sign
For non-digital signs, make sure to install lights that shine on it at night
Make sure it’s visible from all optimal angles
As far as the last tip goes, it’ll be smart for you to pick a seemingly desirable spot, then walk toward that spot from all sensible points to make sure it can be easily seen from all surrounding areas.
Check the Laws
Much like with traditional signs and advertisements, there’ll be zoning guidelines to follow. Depending on where your business is located, those laws could be strict, lax or somewhere in between. Make sure to learn the laws before you install the sign to ensure that you’re not violating any local codes or ordinances. Remember to confer with your town or city’s zoning office, and if you’re leasing a property, consult with your landlord, too!
Good Design Wins Every Time
We can’t stress this part enough. If you’re going to spend the money manufacturing and installing a sign, the whole idea will be pointless if the message on it isn’t conveyed well. Make sure the sign reduces clutter, features legible fonts and doesn’t involve clashing colors to ensure a strong design.
As long as you consider these things, you’ll be more than prepared when it comes time to call your trusty sign company in Bucks County to help you manufacture the final product. Go ahead, get out there, find the perfect spot and give us a call! We look forward to hearing from you.
There are a number of ways in which a sign can be well-executed, and conversely, there are plenty of ways in which its design can only hurt you. For the sake of relevance, we’ll focus on business sign design today.
As one of the leading sign companies in Philly, seeing a great one that knocks the socks off of our feet gives us quite an adrenaline rush, but the caveat is, the bad ones also make us cringe and cry. Let’s go over the what not to-do’s and from there, you can help us in our mission to make the signs of the world look great!
Too Much Clutter
Sure, you want the world to know about everything, EVERYTHING you do, so it can be tempting to try and squeeze way too much information onto one sign. But the problem is, through all that clutter, the likelihood that anything at all will be comprehended is slim to none. So when it comes to your sign, make sure to limit its message to a few of the most important aspects of your business, and once you get the customers in the door, you can tell them about all the tertiary good stuff you have to offer them! If you own a pizza place, you probably also have a bunch of other menu items besides pizza, but you don’t need to list them all on your sign.
Where’s the Hierarchy?
Hieratic scale, or hieratical proportion, is an age-old tactic used in art to allow viewers to easily determine who’s more important than others. Basically, the scale is skewed on purpose to show the most important figures physically larger, and higher above, than others. The same idea should be applied to text, but often it isn’t. Signs that show all text in the same size are subconsciously confusing because they don’t break the message down by importance. As a rule of thumb, your brand goes first and largest, followed by the basic service it offers in medium-size text, finally depicting tertiary information in the smallest font.
Illegibility
Illegibility is the root of all design-based evil. Don’t pick fonts that people can’t read! Sans serif typefaces are generally pretty legible, so when it comes to the important factual information, it’s usually smart to go with one of those. That’s not to say that you can’t use serif fonts, but just make extra sure your customers can read what you’re trying to tell them! What’s the point of communication if it’s communicated ineffectively?
Clash of the Colors
More colorful does not equal better. More color usually equals tackier. Complimentary colors are those that lie across from each other on the color wheel. For example, red and green. That doesn’t mean you’ll see red telling green how nice its outfit looks today, though. It means they’re as far off from each other as is possible. And when it comes to design, that means they help one another pop out. Red text over a green backdrop will stick out easily, in other words. Yellow text over a green background will not stick out or be easily comprehended at all. Make sure to limit your signs’ colors (to maybe two or three), and get their relationships straight; then you’ll be good to go!
There’s a lot to remember when it comes to effective design, but don’t sweat it too much! Whether it’s an LED sign for you Philadelphia area business, or something else, we’ll be glad to help you get squared away and create something stunning that impresses your clients. Give us a call today to learn more!
It’s hard to imagine a time when the world may as well have stopped spinning as soon as the sun went down. Lights out was a literal fact of life, and there wasn’t a magic switch to help devoid a space of its darkness. Kerosene was introduced in 1846, and with the long lasting, bright flame produced by the coal-based liquid, we were able to stay up a little later. But everything truly changed when the advent of the electric incandescent light bulb allowed society to stay up the whole night through.
We’ve come a long way since the beginning days of electric lighting, and in today’s ever-moving marketplaces, the ability to work 24/7/365 is nonnegotiable. Quality lighting is necessary for your commercial business, and the facility in which it operates.
While we’re best known for the LED signs that we make for Montgomery County, PA area businesses, we’re also fully capable of installing commercial lighting for your company. Get in touch to learn more and set up a plan. In the meantime, read on to discover a few facts about mankind’s journey to produce light:
The Early Days
Back in the days of yore, man was determined to produce light efficiently. During that long, dark period of trial, error and experimentation, we came up with some pretty bizarre solutions. One of the strangest examples takes us to the Shetland Islands in the Northern Isles off the coast of Scotland. An oily avian inhabitant resides there called the Storm Petrel. Before electric light was invented, people from Shetland would take deceased Storm Petrels, outfit them with wicks, and voila—a bird-based oil lamp was born!
The High Price of Keeping the Lights On
Thousands of years ago, artificial light was extremely expensive. A Yale economist named William Nordhaus set out to determine just how much it cost to keep their homes lit in ancient Babylon. His research concluded that their abilities to efficiently keep the lights on was dim. It would cost about a day’s worth of wages for an average Babylonian to run an oil lamp for 10 minutes.
Electric Lighting Changed the World
While many people credit Edison with inventing the electric light bulb, it turns out that bright idea wasn’t his, but rather, was perfected by he and his cohorts. The prototype for electric light actually stems all the way back to 1802. A determined chemist named Humphry Davy built an incandescent light using a massive battery to run an electrical current through a platinum plate. It was dim and inefficient, but set the framework for a generation of other scientists and inventors to try and perfect the idea.
We’ve come quite a way since the incandescent light was invented. For example, just look how much we can do with the LED signs that we supply to Bucks County, PA companies. Imagine what Edison, Davy, a Babylonian or a Storm Petrel-toting Shetlander would think of those!
All in all, we’re fortunate to have access to reliable light sources these days. Get in touch if you need your commercial space illuminated!
Try to guess what that number represents. We’ll wait for a minute while you think.
OK. Do you give up yet?
6250 days, or about 17 years, is how long a typical LED light will last. And while the lifespans of LEDs blow their incandescent, neon and other counterparts clear out of the water, they’re also beneficial for a number of other reasons.
When incandescent or fluorescent lights dim, it’s because their bulbs are filled with gasses that are prone to leaking after a period of wear and tear. Those leaks are what cause a reduction in brightness. LED bulbs don’t contain gas, and therefore, they don’t dim!
They save power
And by saving you power, they’re saving you money, and you’re also saving the environment. While a typical neon light uses about 20 watts of power per foot, an LED will only use a little over 1 watt. Let’s put those numbers to work.
Say you need to run 100 feet of light. LEDs will cost about 120 watts of power. If you crunch the same numbers against neon, you’ll be in for 2000 watts of power. If you light your sign for 10 hours per day, 365 days a year, that will add up to 438 annual kilowatt hours for the LED, and 7300 kilowatt hours for the neon. At a cost of $.012/kilowatt hour (which is the national average), your annual spend will be:
$876 for the neon sign
$53 for the LED sign
That’s a 94% price difference.
LEDs are unrestrictive
In other words, the ways in which they can be used are virtually limitless. Between color and movement options, what your sign can depict is only restricted by how creative you are. Your options are limitless with LEDs.
Change your message and make it move
You can update what your message says, and make it physically move or scroll with an LED sign. With a neon sign, the message is what it is. If you need to adjust what your LED says, you can do so. You can also display real-time information, such as the time or temperature. Changing your LED sign’s message is easy because you’ll make that happen via computer software.
With an LED sign, your message will shine brighter against the signs of your competitors, and for cheaper and longer. So, do you need an LED sign for your Bucks County, PA business? Get in touch today and we’ll make one for you!
Last month we discussed why having a quality sign is important. In a nutshell, it’s the most visible representation of your brand, and your first impression can make or break whether a potential customer walks through your doors or not.
So, we have that squared away. You know you need a good sign to enhance your business and brand, but what about the how?
In other words, what can be done to effectively achieve a sign with the perfect look? Leonard Bernstein once said on art that “the measure of its success is the extent to which…it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air.” Those are good words to live by, and they suggest that a great work of art (which is what your sign is) maintains individuality and originality, while invitingly appealing to those who lay their eyes upon it.
A picture says 1000 words, so here are some tips for creating a sign that’ll show just the right image to leave your clientele wanting to know more:
Sans the Serifs: Keep Your Typeface Simple
The most important thing to remember when it comes to signage typeface is that legibility comes first and foremost to fanciness. That means in just about every case, a simple and legible sans-serif font is going to be your best bet. Sure, maybe that decorative script font looks tastefully ornate to you, but if your patrons can’t make out what it says at first glance, your sign is pointless. Helvetica, Futura, Avenir and Franklin Gothic (just to name a few) are timeless sans-serif fonts that could look excellent on your sign!
The Importance of Negative Space
When it comes to music, they say the notes you don’t play are equally as important as the ones you do. Much the same can be said about your sign and logo. Think outside the box when it comes to utilizing the white space. One famous example you can look to as a starting reference is the FedEx logo. Specifically, look closely at the “E” and the “x.” Can you make out that arrow in the negative space? Let’s do something just as brilliant for your brand!
Simplicity Is Key
Going off our typeface tip now, keeping the whole thing simple is the way to go. Saying a lot with a little can be tricky, but it’ll allow you to really face what’s most important about your company. What themes are so integral that they can’t not be involved in your sign? You should be able to narrow that answer down to two or three points. Ever hear the saying less is more? Of course you have! Well, it’s true.
Let a Professional Take Care of the Work
If all this sounds great but you’re still at a loss for where to begin, there’s no need to sweat it because that’s where we come in! As a premier Philadelphia sign company, you can rest assured knowing that we’ll do all of the above to help you create something that stands out and effectively represents who you are.
Get in touch today and we’d be happy to assist you in realizing your perfect sign!
