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Permits
Every
exterior sign needs a permit granted from the city or county where it will be installed. Every business or institution
has a zoning with ordinances that rule what is allowed or not allowed. Sometimes when circumstances prevent a business
from having a sign that they want due to some kind of hardship which causes problems in conforming to the ordinance, a variance
is applied for to ask permission from the local board to amend the ordinance for their particular use. We are experts with the permit process.
This important step is often overlooked when in fact it should be the first to consider before even designing a sign.
You should have a site plan of your property and know the zoning before a sign company begins giving a quote.
We pass along the actual cost of the permit
to our customers with a nominal fee for the time involved.
Zoning
Check with your local public planning department before
making any exterior sign related decisions. Every property is zoned and governed by ordinances that explain what is
legal or not legal. Before a sign is installed the property owner and sign company must have a permit granted by the
local planners. The permit process may take a day or up to four weeks. Sometimes a variance is needed which
can slow the process for up to two months.
We are established to take care of this for you. Call or email your
questions or concerns.
10 Sign Principles To Designing Your Sign
1.
Remember that people of all ages are looking through a windshield,
in traffic, day and night. They must be able to see and read your sign easily. Don't attempt to sell them
with information on the sign - save that information until they are in your business.
2. The proper design
of your sign is critical to its effectiveness. Crowding the sign with too many words or lines of text makes it impossible
to read from a distance. Therefore, fewer words are better (you should never use more than five to seven).
3. There should be something
about the sign that will reach out and command attention. Ideally, the first read should be a large pictorial graphic
or your company logo, but it can also be large dominating text.
4. Your sign
is your handshake with the buying public, and first impressions are lasting impressions. So, your sign must project
the image you want the public to have of you. People will judge the inside of your business by how it looks on the outside.
5. Many owners mistakenly think of a sign as merely a device
that identifies the business. What they fail to realize is that 55% of all retail sales are a result of impulse buys.
People see, shop and buy. If a sign is ineffective, it can cost the business owner much more in lost sales then the
entire cost of a good sign.
6. It should make your products
or services, and your location, easy to remember.
7. Make
sure colors are contrasting. Yellow on white is not readable, whereas black on white is very readable. (Refer
to a color chart or wheel for best contrasting colors.)
8.
If you have several colors in a graphic, stay away from multi-colored lines of text or words (they will compete with the colors
in your graphic). Black text is better.
9.
Ideally, the design and the colors of your building should reinforce the design and colors of your sign (or vice versa).
Color is probably the easiest and most cost-effective device for this coordination of design for business identification.
10. "White-space". This is the surface area of a sign's
face that is left uncovered by either text or graphics. The proper amount of white-space is just as important for quick
readability as are graphics, text and colors. In fact, 30% to 40% of the sign's face area should be left as white-space
for optimal readability.
Site Analysis
Before a business owner puts up a sign, it is extremely important for that owner
to evaluate the business and its location in terms of its signage needs. The criteria below should be carefully considered
before a sign is designed.
1. The type of business
you operate. The very first thing you should do before buying a sign is evaluate the signage needs of your business
in terms of the goals to be accomplished through signage. In other words, is your business:
- The type that needs to "brand" its site in the
community, as with a doctor's office or auto repair shop, so that potential customers are aware of your business and think
of it first when the need arises?
- A
business that frequently advertises price or product specials, such as a grocery or liquor store?
- Or, does your business rely more upon "impulse"
stops and/or purchases, such as a freeway gas station, or a discount motel?
These factors are very important in determining the number of messages (or lines of text) you'll
need, whether or not a reader-board or an electronic message center is necessary or desirable for your business, and help
you determine the overall size of your sign.
2. The type of street (two lane, four lane, one-way, etc.). With more lanes of traffic,
any given sign may become less noticeable because of the traffic obstacles, or masking. As a rule, the sign owner should
try to compensate for this loss through better sign mounting and/or an increase in the height of the mounted sign.
3. Approximate speed of traffic - the faster the traffic,
the larger your sign and its text must be to be readable. It is critical that the text is legible from a sufficient distance to allow drivers to read the sign and safely maneuver through traffic.
4. Obstructions - trees, poles, neighboring
buildings, other signs. For any sign to be effective, it must be clearly visible to potential customers. Obstacles
such as these should be overcome through mounting style choice, sign placement and the height of the sign as mounted.
5. Business setback off of the street. A normal driver has about a 24-degree cone-of-vision through the windshield
as they are driving. It is important that any sign be placed within this cone-of-vision along the roadway in order to
be plainly noticeable to passing drivers. As a guideline, try to keep the sign as close to the roadway as possible and
the text size large.
6. Topography of the business relative to the street. Adjust the height of your sign's mounting
(or select another mounting style) to compensate for any differences in the height of your business site relative to the street.
Again, the goal is to make your sign the most visible it can be to passing traffic.
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