Instant Custom Signs – Drew Brims' Blog

ICSigns is a “Cut” Above

If you remember my last blog post, we talked about pylon signs and how their function is to stand out by the roadside and guide customers to your door.  Storefont (or Fascia) signs are the next step in guiding our customers to our place of business.   Once the prospect or client is on the property, the fascia signs now guide the customer to our door.  It can have a little more information than the pylon sign, as the potential customer is now a more ‘static’ audience than someone viewing the pylon sign.  However, if the fascia sign is the only means of attracting customers (for example no pylon sign exists) then my mantra `the best sign says the least` or KISS  – Keep it short and simple is the way to go.  I often think of a fascia sign as the headline on the front page of a newspaper.  At the top is the name of the newspaper in bold lettering and below is the day’s headline.  This is how your sign should look.

Let’s assume we already have a pylon sign and we are now designing our fascia sign.  What is the most important information we can put on it?  Certainly the name of the company is the most important and should dominate the available space.  If the product you sell is not incorporated in the company name, then certainly a one or two word description of your business is desirable.  For example, ‘Feckle Brothers’ could be the name of the business but if the products the Feckle Brothers sell is specialty hardware, then that should also be on the sign.

Phone numbers and/or a web address can also be added in case people are visiting outside your regular business hours.  Beyond this, any more information is just going to clutter the sign, reduce the space for more important information and reduce its over all effectiveness.  Here are two examples: One of a good fascia sign and the other one of a cluttered fascia sign.

Most leased properties have an existing fascia sign on which the lessee can put their graphic.  If the previous tenant had vinyl lettering on the sign, we can usually effectively remove the old lettering, clean up the acrylic and apply new lettering.  There are two advantages to this:

1. The cost of new acrylic is avoided (normally the cost of cleaning off old lettering is only an hour or so of  labour),
2. It keeps the acrylic out of the landfill – something we should all be concerned about in this age of recycling.

New fascia signs can be of several different varieties:

• Illuminated sign box
• Channel letter, illuminated or not
• Face & Frame
• Flat-cut metal or plastic letters

…to name but a few.  I will be elaborating more on the different type of Fascia signs in my next post.

Some landlords require that all fascia signs in a plaza be of a particular variety so that there is some uniformity throughout the plaza.  Typically, when a landlord dictates a type of signage, it is illuminated channel letters.  We’ve seen more of this lately and while it sometimes forces the tenant to re-think the sign budget, there is a definite benefit.  With all the signs being of a similar type, the quality of signage is usually higher and “budget” signage that could bring down the over-all image of the plaza is avoided. You can look forward to many years in a plaza with high standards.

In summary, Fascia signs are the “headline” above your place of business.  They should give a brief but effective hint as to what lies inside.  Keep it short and simple so that it can be recognized quickly.

We, at Instant Custom Signs, have been making fascia signs for over 17 years.  If you have a fascia sign project or a problem you would like to discuss, let me know.  I’ll be happy to pass on any useful  information .

Also, please feel free to leave comments and suggestions here on our blog.  And here on this blog, we offer comment luv. That’s great for all you bloggers out there.  When you leave a comment, you can add a link back to your own Blog! That’s great for Search Engine Optimization. But you don’t have to be a blogger to leave a comment. We want to hear from everyone!

Happy Signing,

Drew

Tags: Advertising, Design, fascia signs, ICSigns, Instant Custom Signs, Marketing, sign materials, Signage, Signs, Storefront, storefront signs