Business signage, beyond strategic issues
When we think of corporate signage, we often refer to the communication and marketing needs of companies in order to achieve their commercial objectives. However, signage goes far beyond these questions which, certainly essential, alone do not govern the proper functioning of a company. Indeed, interior or exterior signage, adequate marking for employees as well as for visitors is also an image vector for the company and a facilitator in the identification and orientation of the users of the premises.
We tell you more about the often underestimated issues of business signage.
Signage and communication
Let’s go back to the most noticeable elements for companies, namely the communication and marketing functions of corporate signage. Indeed, highlighting your company and its activity is essential to develop notoriety, but also openness to your business markets. Thus, corporate signage to a first function whose arguments easily seduce managers: promoting the development of activity. Not to mention the communication media that would be attributed directly to advertising campaigns for example, signage on the very site of the company is essential. Display panels will highlight the logo and activity of the company so that it is known at least by the surrounding players or the individuals and professionals of passing.
The simplest things are sometimes very effective in signage and display.
External signage
External signage also plays a key role in your business. If you have to receive prospects, customers or partners, they must be able to easily find themselves on the site of your company in order to reach your premises with ease. Good external signage is played out on several levels.
The first step is already to ensure that your visitors can find their way, find the entrance to your business, find the parking lot and park. Direction panels will thus be the most effective tools. Visitors are often reserved for privileged parking spaces so that they can park in the immediate vicinity of the premises.
Consider indicating this through dedicated panels or with effective ground marking. Your visitors must then be able to reach your offices quickly and safely. Delimize traffic areas for pedestrians with route, ground marking and understandable panels.
And if the site of your company has several buildings, differentiating access so that your visitors join the place of your appointment and avoid getting lost on your site. Beyond your occasional visitors, all of these external signage systems must also be thought of the service of your employees who use the places daily. If they obviously know how to find their way in a company they know, the question of security by differentiating traffic spaces dedicated to vehicles or people is very important.
Interior signage
Once they have joined your premises, visitors and employees must be able to find their way inside buildings in order to easily reach the serving they want. For example, the case of prospects, customers or partners who only occur in your business. Like many businesses, the first interior contact point between your visitors and your business is often the host counter. This must therefore be clearly found and identifiable since, once you get there, visitors can be announced to their hosts and be directed to the services concerned by the staff.
And even if they are oriented, your visitors must be able to go effectively inside your premises. The interior signage of a building then plays an essential role. The management of the various services can be displayed using wall panels and effective signs. We can even consider marking on the ground with a color code as is customary in hospital services.
Finally, the services themselves must be identifiable using personalized door plaque. Visitors will thus avoid going to the accounting service rather than with communicators. Beyond professional offices, interior signage will clearly identify useful doors such as WC, stairs, rest room ..
Signage and accessibility
Beyond questions of conventional interior and external signage for the company, the problem of accessibility must also be at the heart of the concerns of companies. Indeed, establishments which receive the public and companies have, since the entry into force of the law of handicap of 2005, the obligation to allow access to all including their employees with disabilities whatever he either (physical, visual, hearing …). The signage will therefore identify the parking spaces dedicated to the disabled, to promote their orientation and their displacement within the premises. In the case of personnel suffering from a visual impairment, signage can for example go through a marking on the ground with strips of podotactile tracks or a display on the wall with Braille panels.
So many solutions that should allow everyone to be able to use the different professional spaces without blocking, whether or not they are disabled.
Personalized business signage
If business signage has a mainly practical function, the design and communication aspect should not be overlooked. Thus, business signage can be personalized in order to strengthen its impact on occasional visitors, customers, prospects or partners, as on employees who will appropriate it even more than simple standard panels. We can thus rely on the company’s editorial charter, in particular the logo and color codes in order to create directional panels, ground marking or custom door plates.
The identity of the company will thus be present in all respects of the company in order to strengthen the communication effect and the practical effect. Marking and business signage specialists thus offer tailor-made solutions to ensure the personalization of all interior, external or accessibility supports within companies.