JW Portable Welding and JW Investrade Inc have entered to Exterior Signs for Business market in Ontario. Both companies have struggle to find the supplier for our own exterior sign in Ontario that will offer what we needed. And that is why we have decided to offer this product and supporting service.
All suppliers contacted have offered very high prices, inflexible designs, low strength structures, low visibility and most importantly lack of future modifications. In our opinion these suppliers were focused on exterior signs for famous brands or large businesses. Obviously, we are not a large well known brand nor even a large business that is why perhaps their product have not suited us.
With such offers for a large exterior sign for both businesses, we knew we have to innovate and go with our own path. We also knew that both companies have enough resources to do it. These resources included JW Investrade Inc. with a very deep background in designing and JW Portable Welding very advanced expertise in fabrication and welding. We knew, we have formed the sizable in-house foundation for exterior signs for business.
As easy as it sounds, the matter is not as simple. Different rules apply to exterior signs focused on pedestrian traffic and vehicular traffic.
Considering vehicular traffic, the desired location must meet jurisdictional policies related to distance from the road and to other structures. Among these optional locations it is a good idea to focus on the location that offers the most advantages visibility to incoming traffic. While focusing on the incoming vehicular traffic please keep in mind that incoming traffic can come from both sides of the road and each side should have unobstructed view on the sign from as long distance as possible.
From the pedestrian traffic point of view, many jurisdictions also provide some policies determining safety of pedestrian traffic approaching your sign. Additionally, these policies could affect the mobility of your sign due to wind, vandalism and reposition.
The unobstructed view and reader’s focus time play a major role in a designing of your sign for business. The exterior sign for business is a message to incoming traffic, pedestrian and/or vehicular, and is often used in promotion of your business’s google profile. This is your attempt to promote your business’s local brand or your brand confirmation.
The unobstructed view and reader’s focus time determine the length of the text, graphics size, and letters size. The reader’s focus time and the distance to your sign determines the message type and affects the sign effectiveness. The pedestrian traffic has typically longer the readers’ focus and shorter the distance to sign. Therefore to attract pedestrian traffic your exterior sign for business can become more elaborate. Your potential customers have enough focus time and can read even the small letters. They often tend to even stop in front of the sign and read the whole message. This is typical for a pedestrian traffic approaching your exterior sign for business.
The vehicular traffic has different rules. The unobstructed view for vehicular traffic to exterior sing for your business should be at least 75′ – 100 feet and in reality it depends on the speed of the traffic. Faster the traffic than the reader’s focus time is shorter and the unobstructed view should be much longer. Therefore, the message should be more concise. Slower the traffic with the long or a little shorter unobstructed view than the message could become more elaborate.
The design of your exterior sign for business involves designing the structure of the sign and designing the graphical/artistic presentation. Both structure and artistic part must meet jurisdictional policies and must be effective. You sign must become an effective business tool to grow your business, this is the most important factor. It simply does not make sense to spend your hard earned dollars to put the sign that does not bring the clients to your business, does it?
Your exterior business sign should contain your clean logo in colours catching attention of incoming traffic. We would like to stress two phrases: clean logo, and catching attention. Many businesses have logos containing graphics and text that are not clean. We had also logos on our websites and on our business cards, and unfortunately we had to clean them up since they would have presented badly on large sign. Our logos were done for websites that looked good on internet but in large scale they were boring and lines were not looking clean. The colours were dull and unattractive. We have used the exterior sign opportunity to update our logos to be in different and more attractive colours. In fact, we must clean logos for large scale signs and colours must be improved.
Choosing colours is rather difficult task and it takes time. Every business owner likes the present old colours and this was our experience too. It is very difficult to imagine operation of your business under different colours. Additionally, some people are more sensitive to colour varieties than others and they see these colours differently. There is also a cultural factor that plays a major role here. In some cultures business should have certain and very specific colours which sometimes are not as effective in Canada.
Nevertheless, we understand how difficult it is to change colours on your logo since we went through it too.
The exterior business sign should catch attention of traffic coming close to your business but also it should catch attention on internet traffic. The good exterior business sign should promote your brand to existing customers coming again to your business and it should increase their loyalty. However, it is paramount for a good exterior business sign to catch attention of new customers.
Clean logo and attractive colours make a difference but if your traffic does not recognize your brand this alone will not make much difference. Small businesses usually do not have established brands therefore promoting a brand that is unknown brings rather mediocre results. You have to create curiosity among the certain group of potential customers to visit your business. These curious people could become your customers and/or will spread the message to your desired/targeted customers.
The size matters for exterior signs and the design of art and structure should encourage a desired feeling. This feeling brings new customers to your business.
The exterior sign should attract attention through its design and its size. Small size signs are perfect for incoming pedestrian traffic, however, they do not work well for vehicular traffic. The vehicular traffic definitely prefers large size exterior signs for business.
The pedestrian signs should have the most important message display for your customers at eye level and the font used should comfortable to read at the distance of about of about 6-8 feet. However, the sign itself should be much taller than average height of pedestrian. The sign should catch attention in congested pedestrian traffic from the distance of about 16 feet
The vehicular traffic exterior sign should catch attention of drivers and passengers as quickly as unobstructive view begins. However, please keep in mind that in majority jurisdictions there are height restrictions for exterior signs for business.
Design of structure and design of art cause the “catch effect” of the exterior sign. The structure must complement the art and the art must complement the structure of the sign. Both components have to complement each other to create the “catch effect”. However, as much as the art component depends practically on the designer, the structure must meet certain structural rules and in many jurisdictions must be approved by Professional Engineer. The Professional Engineer makes sure that the sign is structurally sound and it will not collapse under its weight nor the sign will collapse under heavy wind.
In general we have following types of structures for exterior signs for business
We use jacking action of concrete lags to level the signs that is why these signs must have gusset plates between baseplates and the columns. However, we have installed our sign directly with leg(s) reaching depth of 6′-8′ in the ground. The direct installation although less expensive requires ability to level the sign.
The art component must create this feeling of curiosity for all small businesses that want to successfully grow customer base at the location. The art must tell the story about service or product that customers can find there. This story telling could have one plane graphical presentation or it could be the multidimensional sculpture type. You can also do it with additional text description if potential customers have enough focus time. In fact, it does not matter how you are going to do it but please remember that this story must be timeless, since you will use this sign for many years to come.
The art presented in this sign was designed by JW Invesrtrade Inc and printed by ARTCAL Graphics & Printing.
Majority of businesses stay at the same location for generations since every relocation is associated with losing customers. Therefore your exterior sign must last for decades, please remember about it. It means that it must resist cold Canadian winters and hot summers. It also means that graphical art does not fade or is replaceable. And the sign structure does not rust or change colour. Additionally, the multidimensional art does not rust and/or can be removed for cleaning. These are rather more obvious factors for sign longevity. The galvanization of our this sign prohibits rust for 25 years was provided by Pure Metal Galvanizing – Brantford
Less obvious factors relate to business development in years to come. Small businesses tend to add more services over the next few years of operation. Small businesses add product lines to evolve into larger businesses. Other businesses must drop certain services or product lines due to variety of reasons.
The well designed sign evolves with the business and displays these changes over the span of many years. The owner can at very reasonable cost add a message, replace the message or completely eliminate the message. We think this evolving characteristic of exterior sign for business forms a significant contribution your the success of your business.
Our designing process for your business sign begins with choosing a best location in proximity of your business. Then we take every attempt to use logo that you already have and existing colours, however, as mentioned above, we expect to clean or improve the logo and change the colours of the logo or background colours.
Then we propose 2 or 3 options for the sign structure and its size and we guide the client into choosing the best one considering the budget and the “catch factor”. We can also provide multidimensional metal art for your sign in steel, stainless steel and copper. Majority of signs structures are galvanized since the galvanization eliminates rust for decades. Every sign produced by us meets the criteria of evolution with your business.
Prior producing your sign we take care of all permits required in your jurisdiction including approval of Professional Engineer. Then the production of structure and production of the artistic component starts. Majority of our signs are assembled completely prior installation, however, signs requiring complex leveling are only partially assembled. The presented sign this page is not connected to power but we have options for signs that are visible at night.
Finally we install your exterior sign for business in its place. Our payment structure follows the partial payments for all stages. Our signs are relatively inexpensive in comparison to major brand signs.
Please contact us here with your needs for exterior business sign.