Harford County Signs and Banners Blog

Has the post and panel sign in front of your building lost its pop? Give it a face lift using new materials that will not only make the sign look great today but will keep it looking great well into the future with minimal maintenance.

In the past a lot of signs were made using 4" x 4" painted post as the support for the sign. These post required regular painting to assure that the signs maintained its appearance. With the improvements in materials and the cost reduction due to competition the option of using a vinyl post now allows for a long term, low maintenance alternative. These post can be used as a sleeve to go down over the existing 4 x 4 post reducing the need to dig and disturb landscaping around the sign or they can be used as a direct replacement for the wooden posts. These posts maintain their look for many years with only the occasional washing with water and a sponge to maintain the clean look.

This is what was done with the sign pictured below.

Before:

After:

Panel material is often marine grade plywood that is referred to as MDO. These panels can easily be routed to a new outside shape that will draw attention to the "new sign". The use of a laminated vinyl print finishes up the new sign. There are many other options for the panel that will be discussed in a later article.

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When someone installs a sign in front of their business along a roadway they often ask "How many people will see my sign?" They know that a large volume of vehicle pass in front of their establishment but how many? What is the pay back on that sign?

When you speak of the performance of a sign you will often hear it referred to as the "cost per thousand impressions". This is often taken over a period of time, usually a yearly period. Advertising on your auto is usually one of the lowest but we will discuss that in another blog. For determining how much potential impact your stores sign may have we can rely on data that is gathered by our state's Department of Transportation. Have you ever seen the black hoses that stretch across the road and are connected to a box along the shoulder. There are over 3,000 Traffic count Stations and 79 Automatic Count locations that collect data that we can use to determine how many potential impressions a sign may have for a period of time. Data is collected during the week for a 72 hour period so the data we would be using is for the periods of Monday through Friday. The weekends are a bonus!

Let's look at the map for Cecil County along Route 40 in Elkton just east of Rt 213. On a daily bases 30,730 cars travel by that location daily during the work week. If you were to look at that on an annual basis that comes out to be 7,989,800 potential vehicles that go by on Rt 40 for those 52 weeks. It will be less because of holidays but that does not include weekend traffic. This includes those daily commuters that go by your store daily and see your message over and over. What do you want to tell them with your sign?

So if you look through DOT data for your state there is a wealth of information that can be used to help you determine if your sign will be seen by enough people to pay for the basic sign you were thinking of or an upgrade to a sign that allows you to be more visible.

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