ARCHIVE: Category Archive for: Others

Carved and Routed Signs

In sign-making, as in so much of daily life, what’s old is often new again. Sign-making dates back to very early civilizations. For example, carvings were heavily used to communicate information by the Mayans, and also by the Greeks and the Romans. Pompeii and Herculaneum, two Roman cities buried by volcanic ash and lava in 79 AD and therefore helpfully preserved for us to study today, contain hundreds of carved signs (some gilded, others painted) advising residents of then-important information. The traditional art of Whakairo, or carving in wood, stone, and bone, has been a staple of the Maori culture in New Zealand since the first Polynesians arrived there more than 1,000 years ago. During those early days, sign-makers learned

Five Things You Don’t Know About Wayfinding Signs

“Wayfinding” is a fascinating word that conveys its own meaning very clearly – which is precisely what you expect from “wayfinding signs” themselves. But it’s far from easy to create a series of signs that are unified, logical, and authoritative in design, yet variable enough to convey highly specific information clearly and unambiguously to people who are quite often in a hurry, stressed, confused, and possibly lacking in local language skills. So it’s no surprise that, to many designers, wayfinding signage projects are among the most challenging tasks in all of signmaking, and – when satisfactorily accomplished – among the most rewarding. Here are some interesting facts you probably don’t know about wayfinding signage:   Wayfinding Signage Should Go Beyond

Getting More From the Business Sign ROI Calculator

Signs cost money. So before you commit your business to getting a new or updated sign, it’s natural and prudent to ask whether the expenditure will be a worthwhile one. Fortunately, you can get the answer from our unique and exclusive Business Sign R.O.I. Calculator. But like any computerized tool, the answer you get out of it is only as accurate as the information you put into it. To make the Calculator easier and faster for most business owners and managers to use, we’ve built it with some generic information already in place. These data include a generic estimate of the costs involved – including the necessary Permits and approvals, average figures for electricity usage and costs, the typical traffic

FedEx Survey Finds Signage Powerful

Federal Express is both a well known brand and a highly successful company. So when it says there’s a solid and important connection between good signage and consumers’ decisions about whether or not to visit your store and make a purchase, it’s probably a good idea to listen. FedEx’s classic survey, called “What’s Your Sign?,” measured the power of signage to attract people and influence their buying behavior. Its results underline the potential for small businesses to find new customers and increase their sales and profitability by means of effective signs. According to the survey: More than half of consumers will hold back from giving a retail store a try when its signage doesn’t measure up, particularly if it contains

Inside Metro Signs – Susan MacGregor, Senior Designer

To most of us, beautiful designs just spring full blown from nowhere in particular. But in reality, the polished look of all the objects we see – complete with all the associations each one brings to mind and the various messages and feelings each one conveys – are the result of much hard work by a visually-gifted group of people who work as “designers”. Metro Sign and Awning is well staffed with a group of designers who routinely make clients’ visions come to life in three dimensions. One of these is Susan MacGregor, Senior Designer, who is responsible for creating the drawings that will later be turned into signs, as well as for the presentation visuals shown to clients for

Much-Needed Signage Facelift For Daikayama Restaurant

As Shakespeare wrote (Act II, Scene 2, “Romeo and Juliet”):  “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” But Shakespeare never met a modern consumer, beset on all sides by a wide variety of choices and aggressively courted by all manner of tempting offers. In today’s economy, the right name can make all the difference between one type of flower that sits unappreciated on a shelf somewhere and another, very similar, type of flower that shows up in every suitor’s hand as he nervously rings the doorbell of his beloved. While Shakespeare had some reason to believe in those simpler times that names didn’t really matter much, the Bard of

Inside Metro Sign and Awning – Mark Vella, Account Manager

Cabinet maker, sign maker, account manager. Mark Vella is a “hands-on” kind of guy who very much enjoys working with Metro Sign and Awning’s customers, finding out what each one needs in the way of signage, and helping to deliver it. After a varied career first working with wood, then later with signage materials, Mark found his way to Metro Sign and learned his true calling: making contact and working with contractors, architects, building owners, and just about anyone who has a message to communicate and needs Metro Sign to give it solidity and dimension. Mark keeps his ear to the ground, searching out potential projects via a wide variety of industry channels. He also actively develops relationships through which

Getting Permits for Business Signs

Pretty much any sign you can think of, we can make for you. But that doesn’t mean you can get government approval to place that sign where you want it. In fact, the process of getting approval for business signage is a lot more complex than you probably imagine. It involves dealing with many different departments, agencies, and governments – depending on where you plan to place the sign – and it also involves meeting a myriad of specific limits, requirements, and standards that may or may not seem entirely sensible to you. In Boston, just to begin somewhere, the approval process requires that we submit an application to the Boston Redevelopment Authority for what they call their Comprehensive Sign

Doing Our Part to Help Boston Grow

Anyone watching NECN, New England Cable News, on January 16, 2014, probably saw its featured story on the Boston metropolitan area’s future growth. Specifically, the cable news channel covered a Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) report on demographic and economic trends, which calculates the need for some 435,000 new housing units – including affordable apartments, single family homes, condos, townhouses, and even something called “micro units” – by 2040 if our region is going to sustain the record of strong economic and civic expansion we’ve establishing during the past couple of decades. Even if we fall short of “strong” economic growth, we’ll apparently still need some 300,000 additional housing units. Various  experts and officials spoke about the need for additional

ROI Payback From Your Mobile Signage – Put Your Vehicle Wraps to Work

We’re all used to seeing cars and trucks – not just on the road, but in magazine and newspaper advertising and on TV commercials – with their plain-wrap “native”paint jobs. So it’s no surprise when any vehicle wrapped with vivid graphics and text advertising stands out and gets attention. The American Trucking Association, for example, claims that 90% of the people it has surveyed actively notice advertising wraps on vehicles they see, and 80% of them remember the products advertised on those vehicle wraps. That’s one of the big reasons wrapping your business vehicle(s) can produce very gratifying returns on your investment (ROI). Another reason is that advertising-wrapped vehicles regularly collect 600 to 1,000 impressions for each mile they travel.

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