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In the latest of our Pearce Process blogs, which explore in detail how we work, we explain how design and sign engineering work hand in hand to create corporate signs that not only work functionally, but engage with your target audience.
With over 200 years’ experience, we know that one of the key things companies look to us for is a combination of engineering excellence and integrity of design. Corporate sign rollouts are a major investment in both time and money, and also represent huge significance in the role they play conveying a company’s brand values. So, great design matters.
Good, and effective, design is the science of balancing strong aesthetics with understanding how a corporate sign works in terms of impact and visibility. It’s also about understanding how the core corporate identity signage can be extended across a wide range of iterations - fascias and exterior signage, window graphics, interior signage, point of sale signage, ATMs (for banks), reception areas and wider interior design.
And increasingly, another key consideration for many of our clients, is sustainability, specifically with regard to choice of materials and their ability to be recycled or repurposed.
Finally, great design is about understanding the mechanics around installation to ensure signs withstand a wide range of external factors - weather (particularly extremes of heat, wind, rain and ice), and address critical issues of safety and visibility.
The latter may sound obvious, but a good corporate sign is one that makes maximum impact through both design and positioning - understanding sightlines, visual impact and wayfinding. Related to this is understanding how a proposed sign meets with local planning regulations. On global rollouts our design and manufacturing partners work with us to ensure our proposed designs are fully compliant.
Successful brands never stand still - evolution is key to their survival. With all our clients, collaboration is key, and nowhere is this more evident than the way in which our design and engineering teams work with a company’s brand guardians to ensure that we arrive at solutions that remain on-brand.
A great example of this is how we worked for Clarios, the new global brand that emerged from Johnson Controls sales of its Power Solutions division. Initially we undertook a brand neutralisation programme within a 4 week timeframe, before embarking on a new brand implementation project across 86 sites in 20 different countries. Here, their new logo and the gradation of the design presented technical challenges that were resolved by our digital printing expertise.
Another is how UK wine retailer Majestic Wines returned to us to help with a roll out of new signage across 20 of its UK stores. Working within a tight 6 week time-frame we needed to apply new brand and design guidelines to the bespoke design and installation of exterior and interior signs from scratch within each store. The design changes were subtle, but significant in terms of how the company wanted to move forward its brand to create a better customer experience.
Sometimes a client will have their own ideas of where they want to take their brand, but we see a key part of our role to be part of this conversation. This may, for instance, involve the recommendation of new signage iterations that help a brand better engage with its customers, convey additional messages that reinforce its brand values - or make design changes that help a brand identity become more sustainable.
This is one of the more ‘fluid’ parts of the design process when a company needs to decide whether its brand needs a subtle redesign, or a complete overhaul, as we explored in our December 2023 blog Has anyone seen our brand?
A good example of how we keep things fresh is with our ongoing maintenance work with UK supermarket chain Tesco where we’ve proposed new concept designs across their new stores, whilst still retaining their very distinctive core brand identity.
For large scale rollouts, a wide range of corporate identity signage design iterations helps a client see how a phased investment can be delivered across different areas of its corporate estate. For instance with UK banking group NatWest we created a hierarchy of assets to identify which buildings (such as head office) had the premium design elements, and which smaller, lower key buildings, had less expensive designs.
In one of our most recent projects, our work with UK car retailer Motorparks showed how we envisaged a sign rollout across 5 of their key sites as part of their ambition to be a net zero dealership.
With this particular project, where sustainable design and materials were a key consideration, we proposed design renderings whilst, simultaneously, installing signage due to their very tight timeframe. This is a good example of how our design experience and engineering know-how can provide an agile and rapid response to a client that needs both a quick solution, supported by direction towards realising a longer term design vision.
Finally, good design is all about understanding exactly the scope and extent of the project. In a previous blog we explained how site surveys and asset audits are the critical foundation to every successful corporate sign rollout.
The design and engineering ideas that emerge from this are developed through having a thorough understanding of the objectives of the project, and the longer term ambitions for the brand.
“Good design comes from knowing exactly where your brand sits within your marketplace, and understanding how you want to engage with your customers and wider audience. It’s also about understanding its purpose and function, which can sometimes be overlooked in the rush to create a “look”. Our separate design and engineering teams are the perfect double act for providing the checks and balances needed to create well-designed corporate signs that last the distance.”
