The Little-Known Factors That Turn Business Signs into Landmarks

By Roy H. Williams (Edited from original)

Here’s what every business owner needs to know.

Most businesses have signs that are well proportioned, carefully balanced, tastefully drawn and perfectly color coordinated. In other words, they’re utterly predictable and effectively invisible.

The 5 most common mistakes made in business signage are:

1. understated elegance. Attempting to “fit in,” or “blend into” a scene.
2. underspending.
3. including too much information.
4. placing the sign too high. The eyes of drivers tend to stay focused at windshield height. Low signs are better in town. Tall signs are better on freeways where they will be read – at windshield height – from great distances.

Great signs are always the most interesting piece of scenery in their vicinity. This is why they’re noticed even when people aren’t looking for them. Would you like to have such a sign?

Believe it or not, it’s possible. Not cheap or easy, but possible.

Consider the sprawling white letters stretched across a hillside in southern California: HOLLYWOOD, a landmark known around the world. Did you know that sign was originally erected by a real estate developer to identify his remote suburban subdivision, Hollywoodland?

These are the little-known factors that turn business signs into landmarks:

1. They are dramatic. This can be due to the fact that they’re:

A. grossly oversized,
B. strangely placed, or
C. 3-dimensional

The HOLLYWOOD sign fits all 3 criteria.

2. They are incongruent, contrasting sharply with their surroundings due to:

A. Color. Snow white HOLLYWOOD letters against a hillside of dark brown and green.
B. Installation. The famous HOLLYWOOD sign is not on a pole or a board. Its individual letters sit directly on the ground.
C. Context. There is nothing immediately around it to distract from it. Or if there is something important nearby, it is incorporated into the sign itself.

3. There is something wrong with it. Ever notice how the HOLLYWOOD letters aren’t level, but rise and fall with the terrain?

I doubt if the builder of that Hollywood sign did these brilliant things intentionally. The point is they worked, even if some of them were accidental. Do you have the courage and determination to repeat on purpose the things he did right by accident?

These 4 obstacles could hold you back:

1. Sign codes and ordinances.
2. Opinions of friends.
3. Recommendations of “professionals,” such as the sign company, the architect, or the manager of the shopping center. (Remember, these are same the people responsible for creating all the signs that are currently invisible.)
4. The budget.

If you are able to bulldoze past these roadblocks, the public will soon be using your sign as a reference point when giving directions.

Roy H. Williams