From artwork to install: how a storefront sign actually gets built

Six stages, and the two that take the longest are not the ones people expect.

1. Survey and measure

Before anything is designed we need the facade: wall construction, usable width, where power is, mounting height, and what the landlord or sign code allows. Skipping this is how a sign gets fabricated to a size the city will not approve.

2. Design and mockup

Your artwork placed at real size on a photo of your own building. This is the cheapest point in the project to change your mind, so it is worth spending time here.

3. Permitting

Usually the longest single stage, and the one entirely outside anyone's control. Requirements differ by city and by shopping-centre landlord. Starting the address conversation early is the single biggest thing a client can do to protect a deadline.

4. Fabrication

Cutting, routing, printing, assembly, wiring. Letters are test-lit on the bench before they leave the shop, because finding a dead module here costs nothing and finding it on a lift costs a return trip.

5. Install

Equipment on site, layout marked, anchors set for the actual substrate, sign hung, power connected. On a busy frontage this gets scheduled around trading hours.

6. Punch list

Walk it, look at it lit and unlit, from the sidewalk and from the road. Anything that is not right gets fixed before the invoice, not after.