Wayfinding Sign 42

Well there is no better name for a wayfinding sign than the one that you see here – Willerby Hill Site Plan. It’s straightforward about its purpose.

The design of the map is very clear and concise, with the NHS Trust’s buildings in blue, the prohibition of parking on the main road in red (as are all prohibition signs or notices) and then also on the bottom of the sign there is a small section for directional wayfinding to direct people to specific locations.

The sign itself is constructed using 11g aluminium and the sign face is created using wide format printing.

Road Sign 18

A great pic of a newly installed traffic road sign, looking very authoritative and direct.

One thing to note about this sign, as with all road signs, is that it has a reflective coating on it so vehicles approaching it at night with their lights on can see it very clearly.

This sign is constructed using heavy duty aluminium for both the sign itself and for the pole.

Fitting Sign 35

Ask anyone who knows us and they will tell you our fitting teams are always wearing the correct safety gear. Protecting their noggins is a primary concern of ours, especially when some of our projects are in building sites.

Here you can see that the fitting team is wearing the right gear, the high-vis jackets, the safety helmets, standing on the scaffolding. Another thing to note is that they put the scaffolding in between the windows, you just know someone would open one if they had.

Aluminium Sign 33

As is clearly obvious from the photograph, this is a large sign. Constructed using aluminium composite, this has an impact immediately upon seeing it. In clear large lettering, the corporate logo and name is achieved using vivid and vibrant vinyl.

Overall the length of the sign fits the building but doesn’t overcrowd or overpower it, the same can be said of the lettering too, designed to fit the sign, to fit the size of the building but no more.

Ok, so that’s all well and good, but perhaps people don’t understand why we need vector-based artwork rather than bitmap-based. Could that be where the misunderstandings arise?

A good explanation of this can be found here at the Wikipedia entry. It has a useful graphic to highlight the difference.

Essentially you can magnify a vector graphic any amount and it will retain its clarity and design, because it is based on lines/curves/polygons/shapes, filling in the internals with pixels as it needs. If you magnify a bitmap, since it is based on individual pixels at the point of design, it loses clarity as the picture gets larger because those individual pixels also get magnified.

On to formats, what formats are used for vector graphics? Well we use Adobe Illustrator here, so AI format is standard for us – this also includes EPS files when it is saved in vector format. It is also possible to save PDF files in vector format, but to be honest most people don’t, so we try to avoid them if we have a choice.

Just to include these, because we’re talking about vector files, there are other formats, such as SVG, VML and SWF, but we do NOT accept these since we can’t work with them.

Most people believe that JPG and GIF files are perfectly good enough for their artwork. These are bitmap graphics files. But please remember, if you supply us such a file, and it is 30mm x 40mm, but you want it magnifying to use on a large sign, it will be horribly pixellated and there is no amount of graphics magic we can apply that will fix that. That is why we ask if you have AI or EPS files instead.

But to the business-owner it can be swings from flat out to slow – so how do you cope with this?

Several suggestions that might be of help:

• Talk to suppliers, get lower prices on items that you buy a lot of, if you buy more of them.
• Be careful with new customers – perhaps they have credit problems with their current suppliers?
• Hold on to current customers – they might value loyalty and remember it when times get better.
• In the slow times, use the time to drum up business.
• Training is a way to use your talented employees and see what they’re capable of.
• Get advice from local authorities.
• Ignoring any debt is a bad choice, talk to creditors and arrange better terms.