Tips for Outdoor Signage

Visibility

Although the design of your outdoor sign is crucial, the creativity and effort involved will go down the drain if you don’t think about visibility. The objective of it all is to make your target audience know that your product or service exists and they won’t spend a lot of time looking at your sign.

Your goal should be to stand out but not go overboard in the process as this can make your audience take a considerable amount of time to actually figure out what your business is all about. Built-up signs are a great way to achieve this. It’s highly advisable to keep your signs simple and straight to the point. They should also be appealing and placed in locations where people actually see them.

When your audience understands what your business is all about by viewing your signs, they will be more likely to walk in and make a purchase. On top of this, signs that stand out are more shareable as they are different from other signs that consumers are used to seeing.

Less Is More

Now, the actual content or message you put on your business signs should be brief and concise. Going with the ‘less is more’ way may seem like the absolutely wrong thing to do, but actually it’s not. As already mentioned, people don’t spend much time looking at signs. So, your sign needs to grab their attention with as little information as possible.

Don’t plaster a whole paragraph of text or a rainbow of colours on your sign as this can confuse your audience. Instead, use simple words and brief messages that will arouse interest in your audience.

Remove The Clutter

To add on to the previous point, it’s important that your outdoor signs only have essential information about your business/brand and product. You may be tempted to share everything about your business on the sign, but this goes against the previous point. Remember, you should keep the text on your signs simple and brief. Remove anything that may seem unnecessary. Intuit recommends that signs should have a maximum of 7 words.

Including more content only makes it difficult for your audience to read and understand the information you are conveying. Something worth trying is designing your signs with a lot of white space and some text and graphics to catch the attention of the public.

It’s totally normal to want your sign to have an assortment of beautiful images and graphics. However, you should not use too many to the extent that your signs become illegible.

Studies suggests that at least 35% of your sign should be white space. So, remember this when designing your next outdoor sign for your business.

Choose Attractive Colours

Next, you need to think about the colours you are going to feature on your sign. Colours are closely related to your business/brand identity. Your audience will see the colours in your sign before anything else. Studies note that 80% of brand recognition is done based on colours.

Placing light shaded letter on top of dark background in a popular choice for many businesses. You can also use trendy, vibrant and bright colours as they are able to draw the attention of your target audience much faster.

Use Easy-To-Read Fonts

So, using fonts like Comic Sans on your outdoor signs is not the best idea. Your choice of font can be the difference between having an ordinary sign and a sign that your audience actually loves and shares as it’s so unique from other signs out there.

Choosing the right font that matches the identity and style of your business is very important. When you pick a good font, people will not struggle to read your sign. A bad font can disappear into the background and make your sign look dull and cluttered.

Also, heavy fonts are known to blend together making letters to seem combined and wavy. Using all Caps letters in your text may seem like the appropriate thing to do to make your message loud and clear, but this is not the case. Huge letters can easily disrupt the visibility of your sign.

Some simple but attractive fonts that you can use on your outdoor signs include Display, Helvetica, Sans Serif, and Serif fonts. These fonts stand out adequately and they are easy to read when combined with images and graphics.

An important point to note is that you should not use more than 2 fonts in one outdoor sign unless it’s really necessary. Always go with 2 fonts that match your brand identity and style. You will never regret this decision.

Choose Suitable Materials

There is no need to design a perfect outdoor sign that can effectively market your business and boost sales if you are going to use a poor material. The beauty and creativity of your outdoor sign can only be appreciated if has a suitable base or canvas. Rough or uneven bases are difficult to print on, so you can expect the print output to be sub-standard.

Choose the right material will ensure you end up with the perfect outdoor sign. Some materials are considered better for specific type of signs. For instance, acrylic is suitable for indoor signs used in stores and businesses. It is definitely not the best material for outdoor signs.

Related content from StrategyDriven

 

Protocols for Responding to Black Swan Events

Common Overlooked Controllable Oversight Costs

Yellow Sticky Analysis

Customer Onboarding eMail Templates