When it comes to business signage, your designs have a dual purpose: to effectively attract customers and look professional. Understanding how to make a business sign that achieves both is a critical task for any business owner. Smartpress, the online division of The Bernard Group, simplifies the process of creating and printing custom signs. Before you begin, it’s essential to consider factors like your objectives, the sign’s location, and key design elements like color, size and material. Let’s explore the world of impactful business signage!
Explore all of Smartpress’ signage options.
How to Design Effective Business Signs
Business signage is a cornerstone of your brand’s marketing strategy. It delivers a direct message and creates a lasting impression on your audience. For new and potential customers, your business sign often forms a crucial first impression. For existing clients, it reinforces your brand and strengthens your relationship. Your custom signage must be clear, appealing, informative, and consistently aligned with your brand identity.
Here’s a step by step guide to creating impactful business signs with ease:
- Define the purpose of the sign
- Choose the optimal location
- Select a type of business sign
- Utilize eye-catching design elements
- Pick effective colors and fonts
- Determine the appropriate size and scale
- Prioritize high-quality materials and printing
- Consider lighting and visibility
Step 1: Define the Purpose of the Sign
Before diving into business sign designs, clearly define the intent behind your signage:
- What specific goals are you hoping to achieve?
- Are you aiming for brand recognition, increased sales, customer engagement, or driving foot traffic?
Answering these fundamental questions will provide a focused purpose, leading to a clear and effective sign design plan. Once you understand your desired outcome, you can strategically incorporate design elements to achieve it.
Step 2: Choose the Optimal Location
Location is paramount, whether in real estate or for your business signage. To ensure your signs are seen by the intended audience, strategic placement is crucial. You might have the brilliant idea for how to make a business sign, but its impact is negligible if it’s not visible. Consider factors such as indoors vs. outdoors (or both), traffic flow, sight lines, and any local zoning regulations. Analyze customer traffic patterns, even physically tracing their paths to identify prime visible spots. Install your business signs accordingly.
Compare our indoor and outdoor sign options.
Step 3: Select a Type of Business Sign
Choosing the right material, also known as the substrates, is a fundamental step in creating your business sign. The material should align with your objectives, the intended location (indoor or outdoor business signs), and your budget. With a wide array of substrate options available, selecting the best fit can be challenging. To simplify this process, here’s a breakdown of popular type of business signs offered by Smartpress.
A-Frame Sidewalk Signs
A-frame signs, or sandwich board signs, are perfect for catching customers’ eyes as they go about their day. With two printed signs on either side of a durable plastic stand, they get your brand promos, announcements, even cafe menus, out there for all to see. Whether you’re wondering how to make a sign for a business or nonprofit organization, A-frame signs are an excellent choice for high-traffic areas and make great directional signage, too.
Aluminum Signs
Custom aluminum signs offer a durable and weather-resistant solution for long-lasting messaging. Ideal for outdoor business signs like parking and real estate signs, as well as indoor navigational signage.
Backlit Signs
Custom backlit signs literally light up any space with backlit film that produces vibrant print – your messaging can’t be missed! For use with your existing lightbox, these signs make your graphics shine and reveal a depth of color that demands customer attention. Design yours for retail windows, POP displays, trade shows, even airport and arena advertisements.
Find your eco-friendly sign among 7 substrates that intrigue, inform and wow.
Clear Acrylic Signs
Totally modern and sophisticated, clear acrylic business signs are a must in any professional setting. Simple yet stunningly glossy, they look very clean with a thick, transparent, glass-like aesthetic. The rigidity is the perfect backdrop for printing business names and logos. When you think about how to make a business sign with acrylic, remember it’s printed on one side, but a second surface can be printed so artwork can show from behind.
Foam Signs
Smartpress offers a few different options for foam signs: foam board, polystyrene foam, PVC foam and styrene. All of them are ideal choices if you’re designing signs for temporary or indoor use. Lightweight yet durable, foam signs are a cost-effective sign solution and easy to install with easels and various tape options. We love these for trade shows, presentation visual aids, open houses, retail marketing, directional signage, and of course, giant checks.
Yard Signs
Yard signs get attention from any and all who pass by. And whether that message is local advertising or simply for informational purposes, our fluted corrugated plastic ensures it doesn’t fade. How to make an outdoor sign like this pop? Use brand colors so it’s instantly recognizable, plus targeted messaging to turn the right heads. Try lawn signs for directions to your business, community support, real estate announcements, political campaigns, graduations and other events.
See yard signs in action (and get design inspo for your own).
Banners
To promote your business, create brand awareness and advertise events, custom banners are a no-brainer. From hanging banners and retractable banners for retail window displays and events to step and repeat banners for trade show backgrounds, our online printing options get your message across perfectly. Drive engagement with temporary and semi-permanent banner materials (sustainable, too!). Customize your size, materials and installation for messaging and branding indoors or out.
Posters
When you think about how to make a business sign, you may not think about posters – but you should. Both small posters and large posters get the word out about events, exhibit artwork, provide product details and absolutely belong in your overall marketing strategy. Like with all signage, an important key is placement. Where will your audience see it most frequently? Where will your poster make the most impact? Print yours on a range of paper stocks and finish it with a protective coating that secures attendance or the sale.
Window & Wall Decals
Durable and attention-getting, wall decals offer a vibrant way to display logos and messaging on your brick and mortar’s walls. For window graphics, choose from static clings, perforated window decals or classic window decals to enhance the glass with a creative touch. And since all are repositionable and completely removable, you get to transform your business’ aesthetic – and messaging – quickly and easily any time you want.
See how we went big with custom wall decals.
Step 4: Utilize Eye-Catching Design Elements
Now that we’ve explored various types of business signs, let’s focus on how to design a sign that truly captures attention. A key recommendation is to incorporate visually appealing elements. Your business sign needs to stand out, so consider using dynamic graphics and bold colors as starting points. To further enhance engagement, you might even explore interactive elements.
Step 5: Pick Effective Colors and Fonts
While compelling graphics are essential for your sign design, ensuring your message is easily readable is equally important. Select fonts that are not only aesthetically pleasing but also legible from a distance. Color plays a crucial role in both visual appeal and conveying your brand’s personality. Understand the psychological impact of different hues and ensure your font and colors provide sufficient contrast against the background for optimal readability on your business sign.
How do you make a sign that’s easy to read? With these 10 fonts.
Step 6: Determine the Appropriate Size and Scale
The size and scale of your business signage are directly related to its intended location. When brainstorming ideas for how to make a business sign effective, ensure it is appropriately sized for its environment, whether indoors or outdoors. It should be neither overwhelming nor easily overlooked. Creating mockups can be beneficial to visualize the actual scale of your custom sign in its intended space. Additionally, be sure to research any relevant local zoning regulations regarding sign size.
Step 7: Prioritize High-Quality Materials and Printing
The quality of a sign material is a hallmark of effective signage design. Higher material quality not only enhances durability and longevity, ensuring your message is seen for longer, but also make your printed content visually striking with vibrant colors and crisp fonts, especially when you choose professional printing services like Smartpress. Consider the environmental conditions where your business sign will be installed and select a weather-resistant substrate accordingly.
High quality can be sustainable, too – check out seven of our eco-friendly sign materials.
Step 8: Consider Lighting and Visibility
A well-lit business sign is a high effective one. Ensuring your message is visible, especially in low-light conditions or at night, is crucial. Consider options like backlit signs, which use backlit film to create a vibrant glow, or alternative lighting solutions such as spotlights with LED or neon lights to enhance the visibility of your outdoor business signs or indoor displays.
Print High-Quality Business Signs with The Bernard Group and Smartpress
Now that you understand the keys steps in how to make a business sign that stands out, the next step is to bring your vision to life with high-quality printing from Smartpress, the online division of The Bernard Group. Explore our custom sign options, select your preferred size, material and finish, and then simply upload your print-ready file. By combining your well-thought-out design, considering intent, location, color and size, with Smartpress’ premium online printing capabilities, you’re sure to create impactful business signage.