Top Tips For Successful Vinyl Sign Design

Effective vinyl sign design looks deceptively simple, mainly because it’s easy on the eye. But there’s a lot more to achieving great vinyl sign design than you might imagine. If you’re looking to buy vinyl signs for your new business, or perhaps you’re thinking of giving your current premises a facelift, here are some tips to help you get the best from your graphic design company:

Where Will Your Sign Be Housed?

Before designing your vinyl sign, it’s important to decide where it will be used. Perhaps you want a sign for the main entrance, one for the reception area, graphics for your vehicle fleet, yet you need one specific design across all these communication channels. Where is your sign going? How close will your customers be when viewing it? Make sure your designer is clear about the purpose of your signage and the media it will be used on. Don’t let your graphic designer be like the poor designer who put together a logo in three shades of green, unaware that the client intended housing it on a low-lying grassy verge. Yes, really!

Use Contrasting Colours For Impact

Following on from the last tip, using contrasting colours within your colour scheme can really make your sign stand out. There are plenty of graphics sites on the Internet where you can get inspiration if you’re stuck for ideas.

Keep Your Message Simple

You want your sign to be seen. You want it to have impact. You don’t have the luxury of filling a web page or a magazine spread, where your customers are viewing your text from 18 inches away. You don’t have room to list all the benefits of doing business with your company. Keep your message short and uncluttered and it will have the desired effect.

The Right Font Can Make All The Difference

Using the right typography can give you a big advantage when it comes to vinyl signs. Professional fonts have varying weights your designer can use to give parts of your message emphasis and visibility. Ineffective signs are those where the same font face and weight of typography has been used throughout. Equally, the opposite can be true. We’ve all seen signs where practically every point is written in a different font, which looks most unprofessional.

Make Clever Use Of Blank Space

Just because you have a blank canvas doesn’t mean you have to fill all the available space. In keeping your vinyl sign relatively uncluttered, your message will leap out. Next time you watch a football match on TV (or other sponsored event if you don’t like football) notice how the advertising billboards make use of ‘white space’ to relay their messages. Even in something as fast moving as a Premiership game, you are still aware of the advertising amid the action, as the cameras pan up and down the pitch.

One of the main uses of vinyl signs is in fast-moving environments: either on the sides of vehicles moving at speed; or at road sides or industrial parks where there is passing traffic. To make your vinyl signs stand out and be noticed, keep the design aspect simple. Less is definitely more.