Aluminium

Focus on

It is safe to say that is the standard for the industry today, it is a versatile and pliant metal that when combined with heavy-duty plastics, create a great signage composite.

As well as the flexibility of the material, are a great substrate to place onto, as you can see here in the picture.

Archive for November, 2006, page 1

Magnetic Vinyl Signs

We hadn’t included any magnetic signs in our online ordering systems, that’s the customise sign page, the no smoking pages, the fire exit signs and so on. This was because we don’t generally sell a lot of magnetic signs.

What’s the big deal about magnetic signs? Well these aren’t the stick-on-your-refrigerator funny signs, these are their bigger cousins, the No Smoking signs for example. Think about it though – if you had a 300mm x 100mm No Smoking sign made from self-adhesive vinyl you can put it one place and that’s it, it’s there forever.

The advantage of the magnetic sign in that scenario is obvious. If you have it on the outside of a vehicle for example, displaying your company logo/name, it would be good to have the sign in magnetic vinyl if you change vehicles a lot. For the aforementioned No Smoking sign, in magnetic vinyl, it would be useful for companies with lots of delivery vans.

There are lots of uses but you definately can see where the magnetic vinyl would come in handy.

So now we have introduced new magnetic vinyl options in the online ordering system, take a look for yourself: custom sign design, no smoking signs (these are now discontinued).

This style of sign belongs to the bespoke signs,e-commerce,news categories. Click on one of those links to see more kinds of articles like this one.

Sign Design and Formatting

In the design department we use several programs to design signs. I won’t delve into the particulars of course, but let’s just say that we have one main program we use to design the layout and look of any given sign. This goes for printing and cutting both, as well as formatting engraving output.

But that’s not where the story begins, or ends.

It sometimes begins with clients designing a look, a logo, or an overall idea. Mostly they do this on Adobe Photoshop. Some do this on Adobe Illustrator. There are two types of graphic, bitmap and vector – defined below:

Bitmap Graphics
Representation of a document as an image file in digital form.

For black and white images, each bit represents one unit of information. Logical 1 represents black and logical 0 represents white (bitonal). This allocation originates in printing where 1 = true = print black. Other allocations also exist.

Gray-level and colour information are represented in the same way, whereby the gray or colour value of a pixel is defined by several bitmaps.

Vector Graphics
A graphics format that uses shapes and lines, called paths. Vector graphics are resolution independent graphics that appear smooth and crisp regardless of how magnified the image is on screen. They also can be enlarged as big as you want them without having jagged edges. This format is best for line art and logos that don’t require complicated coloring or textures.

Complicating matters further is the fact that some clients are quite media-savvy. This can sometimes be a negative factor as they might send us graphics formatted using CAD software, which is highly specialised and produces output files that are just a series of lines, extremely difficult to print properly.

To add to this plethora of choices there are those that believe one thing and give something else. Saying that a file will be formatted a certain way, only to find it is formatted in entirely the opposite way, can really prove a nightmare when imported into some graphics utilities.

The moral of this story? To clearly state what format is required of a client, and if you are a client, to clearly state what format a graphics file will be in, and provide it so. We wish to represent you properly, and to present your design in the best light possible.

Because we want to get it right, here are the formats that we accept for work:

  • Illustrator (CS or lower), Vector EPS, High-res PDF or Vector PDF, or High-res bitmap (JPG/TIFF etc.,)
  • All vector based output must have font converted to outlines.
  • Photoshop (CS or lower) files.

If you are sending them to us via email please attach directly to the email rather than zipping the file up first. This is for quality’s sake. And please, do not send us Macintosh based files as we do not use Macs, we use PCs.

One word on artwork: if you are sending us artwork and you want specific colours to be shown, please tell us the Pantone colour reference in your email or with the vectorised artwork. Remember that colour displayed on a screen is different from the same colour printed on paper which is different to the same colour printed on vinyl and so on…

This style of sign belongs to the bespoke signs,design,news,wide format printing categories. Click on one of those links to see more kinds of articles like this one.

Engraved Aluminium No Smoking Sign

2006 Nov 15

Most of the no smoking signs that GRS makes are constructed using or hard foam, in varying thicknesses. These can be in different shapes and sizes of course, and some have rounded corners, and most of them have a clear vinyl face on top.

No Smoking Sign

Engraved No Smoking Sign

This one however is more of a specialist no smoking sign. Made from it is more expensive of course and instead of vinyl or , it is an , and gives a more upscale appearance to the no smoking prohibition. Perhaps a customer wants a sign that will stand the test of time (and weather) if it is placed outside?

It goes without saying that if it is placed outside it should be cleaned regularly and maintained but this sign should easily last several years. It might need a touch-up every so often but GRS also provides that service.

As mentioned this is an engraved sign – most people think of engraved signs as being in brass or bronze, to signify a business premises or a person. Although you should consider this as a , a one-off sign for one particular business, we can do exactly the same thing for anyone else.

Finally, these aluminium signs are fitted with security screws.

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The Importance of Being Secure

In this day and age we can proselytise all we wish about the necessity of keeping computer networks secure, but with security updates coming out seemingly every day we could nearly hire someone full time to do it all.

10-15 years ago this wasn’t a problem, computers weren’t used for the same purposes then. A few word processor documents, a bit of simplistic accounting, and that was that. There were no ‘internal networks‘, no instant messaging, no vast amounts of e-mail. That being said, there were computer controlled engraving machines, but still, nothing to compare with the networks, the wireless gadgets we have today, or the (comparatively) super-computers of today (i.e., Windows XP).

So then, back in the day, there was little need for security. Virus scanners were a thing of the imagination (viruses were few and far between back then), spyware was something James Bond might have considered, and firewalls were something builders built.

Zoom forward to now: we have a small network, we have a network distributed virus scanner and spyware-zapper, a hardware and software firewall, a mainframe server, and a broadband link to connect us to the world. Keeping that up to date is nearly a full time job, especially given the frequency of Microsoft updates.

Add to that the other bits and pieces of software installed everywhere, and the fact that Microsoft’s site does NOT include updates for most of those products (Office, Word, Excel and so on).

So all in all, even for something as deceptively straightforward as making signs (which is as I wrote, deceptive), you need a secure network to run everything properly. I imagine this stretches to other businesses as well, and some must go even further to ensure security, such as lawyers or accountants.

This style of sign belongs to the company,news categories. Click on one of those links to see more kinds of articles like this one.

Colour Matching

I think, speaking from experience as a layman and as someone involved in the industry (now), that we tend to take colours for granted. Biologically speaking it is difficult to work out how many colours we can actually see, but most experts agree that the high end is around the 10 million colour mark. That is, we can see those colours, and recognise them as distinctively different.

Matching those colours to samples however, can prove taxing. Even worse, matching those colours to other colour schemes, can take hours out of the day. Of course, people tend to take this for granted, ‘can’t a computer do that?’ etc., We have to do this manually because at the end of the day it’s humans who are going to be looking at it and right now there are few matches to a human’s perception.

When it comes to most signs, there are a few choices for colours, white being the most prevalent, but when it comes to , or , that’s where it gets a little more complicated.

Most vinyl colours are matched at GRS using Pantone or Mactac colour swatches. We use both as they have a wide variety of substrates to choose from, and according to the job we might have used some in the past and continue to use them now even though we may not use that vinyl colour for anything else. There is a dizzying array of choices. Let’s just say we stick to a selection of 50 or so, which does us just fine.

Computer designed however, is another matter. Clearly, computer programs can create and manipulate a massive amount of colour, there are literally millions and millions of combinations of CMYK values (4!100 <- is this the right notation?). Getting the right colour can be somewhat difficult, and matching a colour to one a customer has provided, especially if we don't have a record of it, or what it looks like on vinyl, can be difficult.

One of the methods we use to match Pantone colours for our vinyl printing is by using their swatch and printing out a small colour block. Then altering the CMYK values, print out subsequent blocks and match the Pantone printed colour to what we see on the vinyl. The reason for this? Different inks print slightly differently on different substrates. What looks purple on satin paper might look maroon or red on vinyl and so depending on what substrate we're printing onto we have to get it right.

So as you can see, colour matching is more of an artform, and highly dependant on the eyesight and skill of one person, rather than relying on a computer which currently cannot do the job.

Update: As evidence of the difficulties faced by printers in such circumstances, I quote this article: ‘Virtual Proofing: A better predictor of color than hard proofs?‘ from .

This style of sign belongs to the design,news,vinyl signs,wide format printing categories. Click on one of those links to see more kinds of articles like this one.

Finger Posts

The classic (ancient) art of is a list of sites with the mileage to each site. You know the type I mean, old films showing a stone marker with the name ‘London’ on it, 26 miles this way etc., Simple, straightforward, but obviously meant for large distances where an exact direction is meaningless on a winding road.

Fast-forward to the present and wayfinding has become something of an art form. Scientific manuals abound as to the preciseness of the wayfinding science. I’m sure you can even find awards for .

wayfinding24.jpg

The (click for a larger image) you see here in the picture are another facet of wayfinding that we tend to take for granted – they’ve been around for quite some time of course. The standard wooden sign with fingers pointing in some vague direction, pictures from World War 2 of locations in the world measured in hundreds or thousands of miles.

These finger posts however are more accurate. Directly pointing to the location they are even artistic in design, a beautiful concept, finished off in clean and pleasant colours, a triangular pointer finishing off each finger. The finial ball on the top even puts the icing on the cake, so to speak.

So all in all, is more than just listing places and locations accompanied with an arrow pointing in a general direction, it’s more precise and can be used with a little bit of artistic license to really make the sign part of the location.

This style of sign belongs to the wayfinding signs category. Click on that link to see more kinds of articles like this one.

Elegant Engraved Sign

Engraved Sign 18

Engraved Sign 18

This elegant example of an engraved sign shows off the skills of the engraver. The material used is satin-finished , which is then engraved and prepared. Mounted on a wooden plinth it is a beautiful example of what you can achieve with engraving.

This style of sign belongs to the engraved signs category. Click on that link to see more kinds of articles like this one.