Monument signs can refer to any signage that is installed into the ground. Pole signs, pylon signs, and post signs can all be considered monument signs depending on who you’re talking to. But no matter the height or width of the sign, they all have the same purpose; advertising and wayfinding. Monument signs can identify the name of a plaza, a single business in a building, or all of the businesses in a shopping center.
We’ve done work for a lot of Supercuts locations in Los Angeles and surrounding areas. There’s a shop in Alhambra that we’ve done some work for in the past and they needed new sign faces for their multi-tenant monument sign. The Supercuts is located in a shopping center called The Marketplace that houses many different businesses. Having a multi-tenant monument sign not only helps those who are looking for a specific business, it also helps advertise to people who are driving by, or visiting the plaza for another business. It’s not uncommon to visit a shopping center and end up visiting a few of the other businesses there since you’re already parked there.
There are many different types of multi-tenant monument signs and different ways to change out information. Some plazas have a sign program that can dictate the layout of your company name or even the entire design. In this case, each business uses their own logo and logo colors for their designated spots and some businesses even have dimensional letters for their sign face. When a new tenant moves in, they’re responsible for getting sign faces made so they can advertise on the monument sign along with the other businesses.
This is an internally illuminated sign so we used Tuf Glas and translucent vinyl for the sign faces. Tuf Glas is a very strong polycarbonate that we choose to use for larger sign faces. Tuf Glas is more durable than regular acrylic and is less likely to shatter on impact. Living in Los Angeles, we get the Santa Ana winds which regularly damage sign faces. Tuf Glas also comes in large rolls to avoid having a seam in a larger sign face.
For the lettering, we used pre-pigmented translucent red vinyl. If a business needs a specific color or logo for their sign face, we usually digitally print it. But vinyl comes in many colors so depending on the projects, we can just use the vinyl as-is.