Tips For Creating Effective Retail Storefront Signage

By Kimberly Parker


If you have a brick and mortar store, you need the buying public to be enticed inside to see what you have to offer. This will take multiple advertising strategies including a compelling website, promotional mailers, local media marketing, and community outreach. In addition, you'll have to create effective retail storefront signage. There are some smart strategies professional designers use that have proven to be very successful.

Make sure customers can see the signs. Before you put anything in the window or in front of the business, you have to determine how visible the sign needs to be to maximize its effectiveness. What you decide will determine how big the sign is, the way it's designed, and how much copy you put on it. Visibility and legibility are critical.

Avoid cluttering the sign with graphics and copy. It is a big temptation for the inexperienced to fill every available space on a sign with graphics, logos, and copy. The problem with this is that the reader's eye can't decide where to go. When a potential customer glances at your sign, she will be confused. You can't expect the buying public to go the extra mile for you and try to decipher your sign. It just won't happen.

White space can be your best friend. If copy is cluttering your sign, customers will have trouble reading it. They will not stop long enough to figure out what it says. White space makes it easy for the eye to move through copy. White space should take up about forty percent of your sign. That may seem like too much, but designers say this is one way you can ensure your message comes across as concise, clear, and easy to read.

Choose the fonts, typefaces, carefully. Some people make the mistake of using all capital letters in their signs believing that it makes the letters larger and easier to read. Once again you have to consider the reader's eye. When all the letters are the same height, the eye doesn't know how to navigate them quickly. When the copy is in upper and lower case, it leads the reader's eye through the copy.

Borders are effective. This is especially true when you're trying to get attention from traffic on the street. Borders effectively pull the customer's eye into the sign. Graphics are also effective, but you don't want to overuse them. Signs printed in full color attract more attention than those printed in one or two colors.

Color combinations are important. There should be lots of contrast between the foreground and background colors. If you have a black background, the copy needs to be printed in a much lighter color, like yellow or white. The reverse is true. Dark backgrounds aren't always the best choice. Light copy printed on a dark background is harder to read than dark copy on a light background.

Advertising isn't cheap. You don't want to waste your money on ineffective signage. You can make your signs pop, without spending more money, by following these smart strategies.




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