So in effect, you're saying it's a graphically striking building but the business it represents is illegible, making it ineffective. That would put it on par with most of the vehicle wraps I see. Lots of flash and bells and whistles, but 5 seconds after the vehicle is gone nobody can remember what business owned it. Most times the business would have been better off spending $300 on a good lettering job rather than $3000 on the wrap.
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Texas_Signmaker
Very Active Signmaker
Exactly. MOST of the wraps I see are like this. Way to complicated and flashy... totally ineffective.
Gino
Premium Subscriber
It's mainly due because most of the people designing are young and have no real hands-on feel what what they're trying to create. Sure, they got A's in design class and A's in color theory and other areas, but they don't know how to utilize the fundamental elements of design. Had they designed those horrible vehicle wraps in black & white or that store front channel setup, they'd see instantly, it ain't gonna work. BUT nooooo........... they throw all these effects on along with eye candy crap and think it's a masterpiece. Design/layout comes at a price and it's usually knowing the basics before you start playing with things you know nothing about. Composition, balance, kerning, distance, type styles, light source and other components play a huge part of a successful final piece. If they got their nose away from the screen and looked out a window, perhaps they'd see the differences. It's just another part of being lazy and non-caring. Put my time in, get my check and go home and play on the gaming computers. Pitiful life these youngsters live today. They're missing so much, then there's life..................... Oh yeah, but I'm old and don't know any better. Sorry.
Texas_Signmaker
Very Active Signmaker
I think MANY of the design problems can be solved with "You have 3 seconds to look at it"... and even that's being generous.
CreativeCreationGraphics
New Member
It must suck gettin old..
kcollinsdesign said:
A great deal of sign people out there can't even manage to create a clean design that satisfies the basics of competent graphic design. The work of past graphic design industry innovators like Paul Rand and Paula Scher are in an entirely different stratosphere.
I find little offensive at all about the "Hittin' Skins" store front design. It's a clean, pleasing looking design that looks like someone actually put a little bit of thought into it. The brand scheme is very clear. The design has an effective color scheme. It's not cramped, cluttered and riddled with all sorts of unnecessary info (like phone numbers, etc). The only fault I find with it is the black channel letters are a bit hard to read since the letter faces and returns are the same color and kind of make the letters run together when viewed from an angle. Outside of that I wouldn't change anything else.
If I'm going crap on someone else's sign designs I'm going to throw the poo at places where it is well deserved. For example there are countless hacks out there who use default Arial on everything -stretching and squeezing it to fit any space. They do the same thing with other default fonts, like Impact, Brush Script, etc. White space? What the hell it that? I see lots of multi-listing tenant signs filled with that eye pollution. It's just churn and burn.
There is a great deal of garbage-quality sign design lining the streets of many commercial districts all across this country. There is also a growing trend of very severe anti-signs ordinances sweeping through higher income areas and trendy suburbs. These sign codes seem at least partly inspired by all the clutter and trash visible in so many other places. There are zero qualifications needed for someone to become a "sign designer." If you have a pulse and can click a mouse you too can design signs. Talent is apparently not needed at all, perhaps just the willingness to work for cheap. It's a "cool" job after all.
Meanwhile the brick and mortar retail industry is suffering pretty badly right now. The 125 year old Sears chain (which pretty much invented both the concepts of modern brick and mortar retail and mail order retail) will likely go into liquidation. The process may start as soon as this day depending on the outcome of a court decision. With the brick and mortar retail sector struggling so badly they need more effective ways to advertise their stores. Instead they're being very limited on what they can install. And those tiny signs get covered up by lots of landscaping and trees lining the streets.
WildWestDesigns
Active Member
It's going to need more then just effective ways to advertise unfortunately. I've seen retail stores (Sears being one) do some pretty questionable decisions around here. Almost as if they didn't do any market research before they setup shop (I'm thinking of one location of Sears that is local to me in particular and there was nothing wrong with the signage at all). It seems like a lot of businesses need to get back to basics in more ways then one.
Then there are some that do have the advertising issues that you speak of. That is something that could help, it still goes only so far. I think some of this is just natural evolution of how things are done.
Active Sign
Sign Guy
Judging from the vid it looks like someone has monster equipement lease payments to make. 
I hope they invested in there sales staff and training too. Might not last.
They are clearly a screen printing/garment shop trying to offer additional services to clients. It's a trend i've noticed in the past few years. Trying to be everything to everyone for a buck. We tried it for a few years (2011-2014) and I don't recommend it. Best to stay in your lane.
My questions would be: 1. Are they actually your competition? 2. Are they experienced in your specialties?
My advice to you is to be the leading expert in your local space. Make sure nobody is better or more knowledgeable than you are at what you do. I have shops popping up all around me all the time and none seem to last more than a couple of years. We are busier than we have ever been due to our service, care and knowledge.
Remember: Its harder to run the show than it is to perform in it.
I hope they invested in there sales staff and training too. Might not last. They are clearly a screen printing/garment shop trying to offer additional services to clients. It's a trend i've noticed in the past few years. Trying to be everything to everyone for a buck. We tried it for a few years (2011-2014) and I don't recommend it. Best to stay in your lane.
My questions would be: 1. Are they actually your competition? 2. Are they experienced in your specialties?
My advice to you is to be the leading expert in your local space. Make sure nobody is better or more knowledgeable than you are at what you do. I have shops popping up all around me all the time and none seem to last more than a couple of years. We are busier than we have ever been due to our service, care and knowledge.
Remember: Its harder to run the show than it is to perform in it.
WildWestDesigns said:
In the case of Sears, its current owners (some idiots running a hedge fund) played all kinds of games with store personnel -literally driving away sales people who built careers there. Then they did as little as possible maintaining the stores. A couple or so years before the Sears in my town finally closed it looked like the store was falling apart. I've seen thrift stores look better than that. JCPenney is also struggling pretty badly, but at least the company's stores still look like they're being maintained.
Store front signage (and store front personality in general) is the most important marketing tool for any business with a store front. None of the other platforms (TV, print, Internet, etc) come close. Unfortunately many smaller businesses won't properly invest in their store fronts. With the growing number of suffocating sign codes out there it's taking the option of buying effective signs away from many business operators even if they want to buy them.
In communities where it's still possible to install large, elaborate signs the people designing and building the signs have a serious amount of civic responsibility to consider. Some guy who designs signs and doesn't care in the slightest how good or bad something looks is effectively taking a big visual dump all over his town's commercial district. When enough visual trash builds up the movers and shakers in a community will eventually lash out against it -especially if it's coming from the direction of trying to keep up with other much "better looking" rival communities. Our throats get cut when that happens.
Texas_Signmaker
Very Active Signmaker
Sooo.... bad sign designers are responsible for the fall of retail? 
HulkSmash
New Member
Kind of disappointed the amount of bashing going on here about someones other business, which seems to be killing it. Be a little professional guys
HulkSmash
New Member
Looks to be a 8500 SQFT building on over an acre of land on a very busy Orlando street. Prob cost around 1.5- 2 million for the building, then it appears to have about $30,000 in EPOXY floors, and probably another $150k, $200k in building renovations after the fact. Also it appears they have about half a million dollars in equipment, all high end acrylic and LED displays. 5 stars on google, 5 stars on yelp.. tons of followers.
How many who commented here can say they have done that well?
How many who commented here can say they have done that well?
Texas_Signmaker said:
Not directly. But hack-level sign designers sure aren't helping the situation either. Badly designed signs and poorly maintained signs both contribute to BLIGHT. Blight gets a lot of people in a community very angry and ashamed for their town's appearance. When they get mad enough they draft anti-signs ordinances as one measure to attempt cleaning up their town. No one wants their town to be considered a low-rent s***hole. If the town's main business routes look like a cluttered junk yard visitors will reach that conclusion.
The end result of many of these beautification ordinances is they limit the size and number of signs one can install on a building and put severe limits on street signs, or just ban street signs completely. In the end a brick and mortar retail will be far less visible to motorists, especially if the main thoroughfares are all covered up with bushes, trees and other landscaping features. That ends up helping the folks at Amazon and other online merchants.
Texas_Signmaker
Very Active Signmaker
I don't see much wrong about some communities having ordinances limiting signs. Once you get out in the suburbs, it's nothing but a sea of the same ol' giant franchise signs anyway...not much a designer can do about that. My town has all ground level signs and it makes the whole city look nicer.
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Any community should have a sign code, but one that is sensible and not so restrictive that it makes it hardly worth bothering to put up any signs at all.
We have a sign code in my town. It has limits on the numbers of signs a business can install on its site as well as the usual limits on height and some square footage limits. Electric signs have to be wired to National Electric Code standards and be listed through UL or a similar authority. But a business can still install a big street sign, neon on the building or other things if he wants to do so (as long as the signs follow the rules).
The codes I speak of pretty much ban entire categories of signs. For example, LED "jumbotron" variable message centers are now illegal to install in Edmond, OK. Neon is outlawed in many places. Many of these codes reduce street signs to small, ground mounted monuments -if they're allowed at all. Nevertheless it's impossible to legislate good taste. Ugly signs can be small, non-lighted and ground mounted or stuck on the building.
One thing I do like in these "upscale" zones where a lot of the restrictive sign codes are going into place: they're burying all the power lines, phone lines, cable TV lines, etc all under ground. It does look pretty nice when all those power poles and overhead lines are removed. They don't have to get rid of signs in the process though. Most of the power for our street signs comes in from the ground anyway.
We have a sign code in my town. It has limits on the numbers of signs a business can install on its site as well as the usual limits on height and some square footage limits. Electric signs have to be wired to National Electric Code standards and be listed through UL or a similar authority. But a business can still install a big street sign, neon on the building or other things if he wants to do so (as long as the signs follow the rules).
The codes I speak of pretty much ban entire categories of signs. For example, LED "jumbotron" variable message centers are now illegal to install in Edmond, OK. Neon is outlawed in many places. Many of these codes reduce street signs to small, ground mounted monuments -if they're allowed at all. Nevertheless it's impossible to legislate good taste. Ugly signs can be small, non-lighted and ground mounted or stuck on the building.
One thing I do like in these "upscale" zones where a lot of the restrictive sign codes are going into place: they're burying all the power lines, phone lines, cable TV lines, etc all under ground. It does look pretty nice when all those power poles and overhead lines are removed. They don't have to get rid of signs in the process though. Most of the power for our street signs comes in from the ground anyway.