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Put An Improved Face On Your Business – The Benefits of Entry Awnings

In a typical building, the glass entry doors and any adjacent windows create more opportunity for unwanted energy loss (in winter) and gain (in summer) than any other structural element. During the summer, for example, a single square foot of unshaded glass can allow more energy into a building than an 8′ x 10′ insulated wall. That’s a big reason why, as we’ve noted here, designers and business- or building-owners are looking more frequently toward adding new entry awnings at key traffic and visibility locations. Once installed, high-quality awnings help limit the location’s energy gain and loss every day and night, and do this during their considerable service lifetime. As a result, their benefits work out to be extremely cost-effective.

Plainridge Casino Opens With Metro Signage Plainville, MA, will never be the same. Not since Plainridge Park Casino formally opened its doors on a pleasant June morning in 2015, with a mission to provide entertainment and enjoyment for the hundreds of folks who were lined up at the door, and ultimately for tens of thousands more in and around Massachusetts. It’s the first casino to open for business since Massachusetts passed its expanded gaming law about four years ago. We can’t take all the credit, of course, but we did perform extensive work on the $250 million, 106,000-square-foot facility’s signage, owned and operated by Penn National Gaming. Plainridge Casino boasts 1,250 slot machines and electronic table games like blackjack, roulette,

Improving Logan Airport Customer Service One key to keep airport travelers informed and moving efficiently is to provide them with real time information. That’s part of what’s happening now at Boston Logan International Airport, where new airport wayfinding, maps, and other signage will be displayed on digital signs in Terminal B and Terminal C arrival areas, as well as in the airport’s new Rental Car Center. The system will be supported by 27 curbside “countdown” signs that detail when ground transportation will next arrive. Digital signage has been or soon will be installed in the new Terminal B connector, as well as in Terminal E on the arrivals and departure level, baggage claim areas, and elsewhere. Some of the digital

The Boston City Council has a Special Committee on “Small Business, Entrepreneurship & Innovation.” This Committee is going to take testimony and deliberate about regulations concerning free-standing sidewalk signs in our fair city. The date: July 23, 2015. The time: 2:00 pm. The location: City Council Chambers. One reason for the hearing is the profusion of new, old, and conflicting regulations that can be applied to these free-standing sidewalk signs. The current City of Boston zoning codes have different standards for different neighborhoods, as well as for various business districts and even for some of the sub-districts within those areas. Once your business gets a ticket for having an “illegal” sidewalk sign, you tend to get interested in the topic.

There’s a lot of talk about “green” these days because many firms are jockeying to position themselves as environmentally conscious and more “green” than their competitors. The signage industry can be a major partner in this effort. To help bring you up to speed, here are 5 things you probably don’t know about “green” signage: 1. Signage can help a facility gain LEED (the US Green Building Council’s “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design”) certification. For example, interior signs crafted from certain materials can provide credits toward LEED certification. 2. Upgrades to signage can provide big environmental benefits at major savings, compared with total replacement. Refurbishing old signage saves money and eliminates the use of new material (that doesn’t have

While Metro Sign & Awning has long been happy to call Boston our home, we nevertheless get excited when we’re asked to design and/or fabricate signage for natives of other parts of the U.S. Whether we’re working with a West Coast architectural firm, or designing custom signs for a national partner based in Texas or Tennessee, we love what we do, wherever we’re asked to do it. In fact, we’re just as proud to point some pylon signs we’ve installed in South Carolina or to show off photos of a giant banner in Chicago as we are wayfinding signs or a public park here in the Boston area. We’ve even developed our ROI calculator than any business around the country

The Supreme Court has been much in the news recently, but hardly any of the media noticed or reported on one if its decisions that could have profound impacts on the signage industry. Specifically, in the case: Reed v. Town of Gilbert (Ariz.), the Court ruled that limiting temporary directional signage more than other types of temporary signage is a violation of the First Amendment. The ruling was unanimous, but several of the Justices issued their own opinions regarding the meaning and extent of the ruling. As a result, it will probably take years for the legal community to sort out what the practical impact of this new ruling on the signage industry will be. Limitations on Temporary Directional Signage

Make Bold Statements With Dimensional Signage Dimensional (also called “3-D”) signs are another powerful tool in our “signage expert” portfolio. Whether built for indoor or outdoor installation, these vivid, tactile signs can be custom fabricated in almost any shape, color, and size to help realize almost any design intention. Dimensional signage readily stands out from the visual background and has been shown to work very well for such signage applications as: Company Logos and Logotypes Building Identification and Numbering Directional and Wayfinding Signs Office and Lobby Branding While dimensional signs were once a relatively difficult and complex option, today, with our expert technicians overseeing our state-of-the-art, computer-controlled cutting equipment, we can quickly and accurately translate almost any design into dimensional

The Boston Redevelopment Authority recognizes that storefronts and signage significantly shape the character of a given district. To help control and improve that character, the BRA and the City of Boston have enacted regulations and established guidelines for the city as a whole, and for many special districts. The idea is to help ensure that storefronts and signage complement their local neighborhoods. Nevertheless, every effort is made to allow individual business owners to effectively promote their goods and services, and also to express their individuality and creative ideas. Over the years, Metro Sign and Awning has developed a good deal of expertise and experience in working with the various regulatory agencies, helping business owners, architects, and developers to realize their

We can’t really take credit for this one. Browsing the web the other day we came across a blog that celebrates New England through signage you’re unlikely to see anywhere else. It resonated with our hearts as well as minds, so we decided to link to some of the photos it displays. For example, we New Englanders have a unique way of stating things: Thickly Settled And we love our heritage, enough so that we’re unlikely to update a sign just because it is showing its age, like this one. Slow School Other areas of the globe have winter, but few of them are inhabited by people so comfortable with the annual changes in weather