Whether you are opening your first business or moving to a new location, you will need to adhere to the property manager’s rules when leasing a property. Some landlords aren’t specific about signage and you just need to worry about what the city will allow.But if you are in a shopping center or a plaza, there is most likely a master sign program with very specific sign criteria that you need to adhere to. This is because when a center or plaza is being designed, the designer or architect has a vision of how the area will look after the spaces are filled and customers are coming in and out. Having signs that are all a specific size or lighting style will assure that everything looks uniform and that a specific business isn’t going to stand out because they have a larger sign or brighter lights and colors.
This can sometimes cause issues because the way your logo is laid out, it might not look like it’s supposed to when made into a sign that needs to follow certain specifications. This is why it’s great to work with a custom sign company like us that has experience in making many different types of signs so we can help you design something that will stay true to your brand while getting approval for installation by your landlord.
When we see that a customer is wanting to put a sign up in a plaza or shopping center, the first thing we as for is the sign program. Most of the time, this alone will tell us how large the sign needs to be and how it needs to be made. Once we have that and the customer’s logo, we get started on how we can make everybody happy with the sign design.
Supercuts is a client that we have worked with for many projects. For most of their locations, we make a front-lit channel letter sign. But for a recent job at the El Camino Shopping Center, the whole plaza was getting an update and Supercut’s current sign had to be replaced with a reverse-lit channel letter sign.
Instead of a channel letter with translucent faces, we made the Supercuts letters from aluminum and custom painted them. The backs are made with Lexan, a UL listed clear polycarbonate, and LEDs are installed inside of the letters facing the Lexan. This way, at night time, the sign will light up and the LEDs will create a halo effect around each letter. For this reason, reverse-lit channel letters can also be referred to as halo-lit channel letters.