Tips for designing a commercial sign

Your sign is a message to the world, so you’ll want to make sure your sign gets noticed. Once you’ve decided what you want to say, there are a few things you should consider before you visit the printing shop.

One of the first steps you should take when designing a commercial sign is to choose colours that stand out. Your colour choice will help your commercial sign get noticed, read and remembered. You should think about what colours fit your business’ brand and what will be noticed from across the street. A poor colour choice will make it difficult to read your sign or even notice it in the first place. If you’re a designer, think about the best colour combinations for the background and type.

Your sign is a message from your company. There are two key elements to your sign that clearly state who you are: name of business and logo. Before you design your sign, you should have these two elements solidified. These are probably the most important pieces of your branding.

Now that you’ve got your customer's attention, what are you going to say? Once you’ve decided what your main message will be, make sure it’s a clear and simple statement. Try not to clutter your sign with too many messages. Choose a strong statement that will hook your customer.

Next, pick out a font type that is easy to read. Stay clear of font types that are difficult to see from a distance, and make sure the size of your font is large enough to read.

A key tip for designing a commercial sign is to design it with beautiful eye-catching graphics and images. Pairing graphics and/or images with your main message can instantly bring focus to the product or service you’re offering. Your image should also be a size that can be easily seen and identified from a distance.

As you go through the above tips for designing a commercial sign, there is one final decision you’ll need to make: how big should it be? Just like font type size and image size, you should think about where your sign is being placed. You may already be working with strict size specifications. If not, make sure your commercial sign is large enough to get noticed and large enough to accommodate all your design elements (i.e. name, logo, headline, graphics, etc.).