Signscape blog

Jeremy carrying out maintenance

All of you that have been following our Blog and developments on the website are aware that last year we purchased our neighbour MH Powder Coatings and then moved the plant into the Signscape Factory – something I wrote about back in October last year.

When we took the Powder Coating side on, I probably didn’t look into it sufficiently in terms of maintaining the oven, keeping in clean – to ensure no inclusions in the work. It has definitely cost us time and money (more than we planned for).

We invested in some new kit to ensure that it runs smoothly and efficiently and now put new day to day procedures in to ensure that everything is as clean as it can be.  Thanks to everyone who has given us advice on this, particularly Jim Kearse – who is a fountain of knowledge on all things painting.  It is great to now be able to offer this service in-house and keep improving our quality and efficiency of our painting. Also a big thank you to Jeremy for all his hard work, research and determination in getting it right!

Mono D Posts

This picture shows some of the diversity of colours we do on a weekly basis – sign makers come up with some fantastic colour and graphic schemes and its great we are a part of that.

 Bob welding some lugs onto a guard for a printing machine. We then will have to repaint guards (powder coat) and send out to customer so he can fit to his printing machinery.

All of our welding is done on site, but occasionally we have to outsource for specialist work. We seem to be getting stranger requests for our engineering shop – including recently hotel safes and vending machines for a famous brand of male contraceptive products. Some of our more enthusiastic young guys have been wanting to get more involved in the latter, but we are doing our best to curb their ardour!

As a Sign maker and supplier I’m constantly being asked to discuss the merits of signs, both good and bad, as well as the aesthetics in relation to their surroundings. There are many different approaches to this and probably no single answer, but all signs should convey simply a message that the “target audience “needs to understand, whether this is an instruction, warning, or just to convey a piece of knowledge. Commercial Signs and Signboards seem to be under constant scrutiny recently- too many signs, too few, too confusing and the sign-maker has a difficult job to appease the client.

This was a thread a colleague in the States from USA Today - let me know about – I wonder if any of our politicians/local authorities would come up with anything like this to help business’

I firmly believe that good signage can help any company stand out from the crowd, if you get a chance have a look at these really creative designs that have been produced and shown on UK Signboards – Keep up the good work David!

Flickr favourites

 We’ve collected some of our favourite images of signs & media we’ve found on flickr… hope you enjoy them. It’s interesting to look at some of the ones from the USA – very bright and colourful, the European designs are more understated. Later in the year we’re hoping to have a load of Signscape images that will inspire and challenge!

Lee "fettling"

 Caught Lee fettling this morning! (preparing metal for paint), I’m still getting used to West Country Speak… I simply asked for Lee and one of the lads shouts out “where’s he to?” I shall continue with my Somerset language course shortly…