Fabricated signs provide striking and creative ways to promote business
Fantastic fabrication
Signs have been around for as long as businesses have been around. The hints of history can be found in ghosts signs painted onto the side of buildings and often found hiding but preserved underneath newer signs.
Today, signage has evolved and continues to evolve. Signs come in all shapes and sizes from retail park totems and built-up illuminated letters, to banners, flags and window and floor graphics.
The art of fabricating signs is one that requires many different machines and skills, from operating laser and computerised numerical control (CNC) machines, to being able to weld, solder and hand bend letters. Other factors include space and funds.
Sign fabrication itself is something that splits sign businesses with some operating as trade manufacturers with the sole purpose to fabricate signage. Other smaller and medium-sized businesses may outsource much of their sign fabrication depending on the job at hand.
In this feature, we speak to some of the fabricators and sign businesses producing signage and explore the tools and skills needed to do so.
Trendy signs
FASTSIGNS is a global signage franchise with stores all around the world all independently owned. FASTSIGNS Manchester produces everything from custom signs and graphics, exhibition and display signage, interactive digital signage, interior design, point of purchase signage, to printing and mailing products.
Richard Wedgwood, managing director, explains that the company has offered fabricated lettering since it first started trading more than 11 years ago. One trend the company has noted recently is that built-up lettering has remained a firm favourite, although Wedgwood notes there has been a move towards metallic finishes such as polished stainless steel and polished gold effects.
Caerphilly-based Sauce (formerly Print Sauce) has also noticed a big rise in requests for copper and rose gold signage, as well as concrete and industrial-type finishes. Gary Bagstaff, managing director explains: “We’re doing a lot more 20ml flat cut materials. So, we give a 3D effect, but it is cheaper to produce than an actual built- up by hand letter. We always try and steer away from composite stuff because it’s cheaper and it doesn’t tend to last as long. We’d rather go down the route of powder coated proper fabrication.”
Sauce uses an in-house CNC router to produce flat cut lettering
Over at trade fabricator, SignFab, Carl Hodgson, chair of the company, says it is still making the same types of signs as it was 20 years ago with the same manufacturing techniques. “The only real things that have changed is the more varied use of colour,” Hodgson says, adding: “Be this by the varied use of LED illumination, digital colour printing and more variety in vibrant and specialist paint finishes. All of which are areas we have developed in-house and grown to meet the market expectations.”
As well as being the president of the ISA-UK (The UK’s International Sign Association), Sam Armstrong is the owner of signage consultancy, Make it Happen. Through training workshops and consultancy, Armstrong experiences first-hand the varying trends and happenings in sign fabrication.
Industrial materials are a popular choice with businesses
The popularity of industrial-type materials and styles is something Armstrong has been seeing a lot recently too. She says: “The most trendy at the moment, I would say, is brass which we try to steer people away from because of the maintenance factor, nobody actually maintains signs. It’s lovely having a beautiful blingy sign in brass but if you don’t clean it, it doesn’t look lovely and blingy. Corten, again at the moment is a really popular product. Rusty-looking signs.” Another popular request currently is living walls which Armstrong says have boomed as businesses have reopened and redecorated as we moved out of lockdown.
Not one size fits all
Due to the limitations and requirements of being able to offer sign fabrication in-house, it is not something that all sign companies are able or choose to do.
For some, a lack of workspace will mean that they cannot offer the production of larger signs such as totems. Budget is also a big factor as with any service, you need enough demand to warrant investing in machinery and skilled workers.
This is where smaller businesses may outsource sign fabrication jobs to trade fabricators which have the setup ready to go for one-off jobs.
Some smaller-sized businesses choose to outsource some sign fabrication to trade fabricators
As FASTSIGNS Manchester has grown, the company has moved into fabrication of certain ranges of products however, it does not offer fabrication to third parties.
Wedgwood comments: “Competitive trade-only fabricators can offer a highly competitive solution for businesses unable to fabricate in-house.”
On whether it’s beneficial to offer sign fabrication in-house or to outsource all fabrication, he adds: “My advice would be to invest in some additional fabrication capabilities as a direct response to sustained customer demand. Under-utilised machinery in the workshop is a financial drain and nowhere near as cost effective as it can sometimes appear.
“There is no point in adopting a ‘build it and they will come’ approach anticipating demand to follow a specific direction you have chosen to take. Partnership with quality trade-only fabricators is a highly cost effective solution until you have established a sustained customer demand for specific product streams.”
Being resourceful
Sauce has a fleet of large-format printers, laminators, mounting tables and a CNC cutter, but outsources some of its sign fabrication jobs through Armstrong who works closely with SignFab.
Bagstaff explains why this is the best option for Sauce: “I think it’s cost, staffing, the cost of the machinery and the skills that you need. We’ve been on Sam’s courses at SignFab and the guys there tried to get us to make some letters by hand. I think you need such volume of work that you need to be doing it day in, day out. For us, with built-up 3D letters for example, we might do a job a week for that, but to be making those I feel like you’d need to be doing it every day just to keep the skill levels up.”
Hand bending letters is a skilled craft
Through speaking to larger companies, Bagstaff has noticed that more companies are scaling back what work they do in-house and outsourcing a lot more. He says: “They’re outsourcing a lot more production and outsourcing a lot more installations and their main sales team are a middleman-type operation.
“Some of the sign companies I know not too far from me are just an office. To me, that seems like the way things are going. It works well for us as we don’t have to heavily invest in machinery, and it works well as we’re more adaptable and can do more by just outsourcing.”
Having said that, the company has recently invested in a CNC machine and now offers flat cut lettering with ACM (aluminium composite material) and acrylics in-house. According to Bagstaff, the cost of CNC machines has come down so much that this is what made the team decide to invest. “We got a brand-new CNC machine from a company in Birmingham which was about £10K. The last time we looked into it they were about £50K-£60K.”
Whilst the company has added flat cut lettering to its offerings, the addition of fixtures and fittings to the signage means more time and resources are needed. Bagstaff notes the fine line between having enough work to make it viable and needing to invest in the space and skills to offer it.
He explains: “The issue we’ve got is that if we wanted to do a flat cut ACM logo text-based, gluing fixings on the back for us is a bit of a pain and we’d almost need a permanent station and someone who’s job that is.
“There’s companies like MDP Supplies now who do flat cut lettering and their cost is so low that it’s almost not worth our bother making it ourselves. By the time we’ve got ourselves set up to do it and got the glues and all that stuff, it’s not cost effective.”
According to Armstrong, a lot of companies use CNC routers to produce sign trays using ACM. They will then put vinyl graphics onto it rather than hand fabricate signage through welding or soldering.
Trade sign manufacturers SignFab are an example of a company with the setup, space and funding to offer all sorts of sign manufacturing. Hodgson explains that whilst many sign companies focus on their own strengths such as sales and installation, manufacturing is often limited by capacity and ability.
Striking built-up signage is a staple for shop branding
He adds: “SignFab has steadily grown each of its departments to accommodate new products and services, so it can offer the full trade manufacturing service and support to its clients. Now with over 140 staff, we cover every area of the expected trade manufacture. But also including a full training and customer service support – something smaller companies cannot offer.”
Even with the tools and resources to produce large-scale sign fabrication, there are still limitations. For SignFab, whilst the company has 65,000sq ft of workspace, Hodgson says that the company often finds its limitations are met by expectations on labour capacity and timeframes for delivery rates.
On how the company addresses this, Hodgson says: “Fortunately we have invested heavily in a production planning department that programmes all work accurately and communicates regularly with clients to make sure we meet expectations on agreed dates.
We would sooner be honest and give a longer lead time, rather than let a customer down by agreeing to something we cannot achieve”
“We would sooner be honest and give a longer lead time, rather than let a customer down by agreeing to something we cannot achieve.”
O Factoid: Trade manufacturer, SignFab, has 65,000sq ft of workspace O
Staffing shortage
Whilst you need the tools, space, and funding to produce signs in-house, a major theme that cropped up from every company we spoke to is the need for skilled workers. You could have all the capacity in the world to produce any sign going, but without the skilled workers available to do so, you are stuck.
For Sauce, a lack of apprenticeship programmes for sign-making or printing has caused the company issues over the 11 years it has been operating. Bagstaff explains that the company has tried to take on apprentice sign-makers but there are no colleges in Wales that offer the qualification. The team currently has one apprentice, however the college that is providing the apprenticeship is having to adapt a business admin course to sign-making.
Another thing Bagstaff notes is that more and more skilled staff in areas like vehicle wrapping and sign installation are opting to go freelance rather than being employed at sign companies. This is then causing trouble for companies looking to hire in-house skilled workers for these areas.
This is a topic Armstrong is all too familiar with and a big part of her work is providing training and workshops to businesses in the sign industry. She says: “You have got to have the right person with the right skill set with the passion. If you’ve not got the right members of staff, you’ve not got the right business.
“Forget the tools, forget all the machinery because all of those need someone to run it. At the moment it’s a massive problem getting skilled people in our industry.”
For Armstrong, another element of this is a lack of training and knowledge within sign businesses of what goes into fabricating a sign. She says that as lots of salespeople have never installed a sign, they don’t necessarily know what fixings to ask for, for example.
“What happens is we just pick things up as we go along and how we learn is by our mistakes,” she says, adding: “But training is becoming better. There’s academies and workshops and people are now realising there’s a business within the business.”
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