Another day, a different project

As far as large-scale signage projects go, Baillie Signs do not shy away from a big project. The sign manufacturer and supplier has been kept busy producing every single sign for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in the past, and are currently working on a five figure contract for Edinburgh Airport.

With three directors—Gordon Baillie, Mark Baillie, and Derek Minto—the company was started by Gordon Baillie’s father and then taken over by Gordon Baillie. With an average yearly turnover of £1.8m and approximately 3,000sq ft of production space to create their many types of signage including vehicle graphics, large format signs, and window displays, Baillie Signs has grown significantly since their beginnings as a billboard company.

Paul Lennie, sales manager of Baillie Signs, has been with the company for five years after moving from a rival company. He says: “We’ve been going for over 25 years now, we started back in 1988. We used to work for a lot of estate agents, and still do, for sale and to let boards. Then people see your name about town and it just picks up from there. We’ve grown a lot from that.”

As well as enjoying the hustle and bustle of busy Edinburgh life, the move to Baillie Signs was one filled with possibilities for future growth, which Lennie explains as the reasons for his move: “The opportunity to join a bigger company, there’s a lot more opportunities, a lot more room to grow. And obviously the proverbial, you move to the city and you get the benefits of living in the city.”

Spelling it out

Being located on the edge of town makes Baillie Signs the ideal choice for big city projects, making it no surprise that a contract with Edinburgh Airport has come about. This kicked off in October with an enquiry from a landscape architect and the developments went from there. Baillie Signs will manufacture and install three metre high letters spelling Edinburgh, and are in the manufacturing process currently. The large letters draw certain parallels with the iconic Hollywood sign.



“I think it was along those lines,” agrees Lennie, “they wanted something that was going to be quite a high impact, when you arrive at that section of the airport it was going to be in your face. Three metre high letters fixed into the ground is going to do that for you. From there we were developing how we were going to do it and how we were going to fix it. We had to pull on board structural engineers to do all the calculations for us to make sure that what we designed was structurally sound and it wasn’t going to blow over.



The steel inside some of the letters is 10ml thick and the build for all of the letters will take eight weeks to complete. Lennie continues: “When you think of the actual engineering involved in it, all the frames have got to be built first and the letters have to get painted so there’s a lot of time involved in doing that but also the labour time in just moving the things about. They weigh about on average 800kg for one letter. In terms of install, you’re talking about getting a crane for dropping them onto the foundations. It’s massive, even just the logistics involved.”



Baillie Signs call on their experience in the industry when carrying out new projects. “The actual fitting of it is fairly easy, getting it from someone’s sketch into a final product is where all your time and effort goes. Once it goes into production, the guys are skilled and they know what they’re doing, what they’re cutting and wielding. Once it gets to that stage it’s fairly simple. It does take a lot of experience to actually put it all together.”

Though they have carried out larger projects, Lennie believes this particular project will draw in a lot of attention. “For what this is going to be and where it is, I think a lot of people are going to see it so it’s going to get a lot more publicity and it will probably be on TV as well once it’s in.”

Happy customers

Last year Baillie Signs created signs for European Marine Science Park in Oban. “That was a good job. It was granite signs, they were all engraved and they weighed over a tonne each,” says Lennie. It is this variation day to day that Lennie enjoys. “You can come in one day and be doing an order for 100 parking signs and you could come in another day and be doing an order for granite signs, it could be anything. You don’t know what you will be doing one day from the next because you don’t know what people want. It’s a benefit definitely.”


In an industry that is changing constantly with new technologies, Baillie Signs strive to stay up to date. “Everybody moves so fast, you’ve always got to try and keep up with everybody. You’ve got to see what everybody else is doing and try and keep up.”



Above all, keeping their customers as happy as possible is the most important thing. “Our sales team are extremely knowledgable and they know about all types of signs. No matter what you ask them, they’re going to know and they’re going to understand how you put it together. It’s a lot about investing in people and making sure everybody’s kept up to date. There’s so many one man bands that don’t really know what the client wants, so it’s just a case of knowing your client and knowing what they want.”


With the anticipation of the finished Edinburgh Airport signage and a growing portfolio of diverse orders, Baillie Signs look forward to what is in store for the team next.

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