The sign that works for a strip-center retailer will not pass on a fuel canopy or in a medical corridor. Six pages, six sets of rules, and what each one actually costs you to get wrong.
Before we draw anything, a quote has to answer three questions: who has to approve this sign, how far away does the customer read it, and how often does it have to change. The answers move by industry, and they are the reason a restaurant quote and a shopping-center quote look nothing alike.
Approval is what stops projects. A retail tenant answers to the sign criteria exhibit in the lease. A branded fuel station answers to its fuel brand image program. A medical suite answers to a federal standard: the 2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design require interior signs identifying permanent rooms and spaces to carry raised characters and contracted Grade 2 braille. See sections 216.2 and 703 of the 2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design.
Every one of them answers to the local sign code on top of that. In Philadelphia the Department of Licenses and Inspections issues the permit, and the City states that an exterior sign needs a zoning permit, and a building permit except for painted signs and adhesive or vinyl graphics and letters, with an electrical permit added when the sign is illuminated. See the City of Philadelphia guidance on getting a building permit to install signs. Outside the city line it is a different ordinance in every township across Bucks, Montgomery, and South Jersey. We read the governing document before we design, not after you have approved a concept.
Reading distance sets the size. A driver moving at speed on Roosevelt Boulevard needs a pylon tall enough to clear the tree line. A couple walking Frankford Avenue needs a blade sign hanging out over the sidewalk. Undersizing is expensive, because the correction is a second sign rather than an adjustment.
Change frequency sets the construction. Fuel prices change daily, tenant panels change with the lease, window graphics change with the season. Those get built to come apart on purpose. A practice name that will read the same in ten years gets built to stay put.
Each page covers the sign types that industry orders, the approval it has to clear, and the part that usually goes sideways.
Blade signs for walkable corridors, front-lit or halo-lit channel letters, awnings, and interior menu boards in materials that wipe down. The constraint is the opening date, which does not move, so the permit gets filed early and fabrication runs alongside the review.
Restaurant Signs detailsChannel letters sized to read across a full parking field, light box cabinets, and seasonal window graphics. The constraint is the landlord: most centers publish sign criteria that fix letter height, illumination, and mounting before a designer touches it.
Retail Store Signs detailsPricing pylons, LED price changers, canopy fascia and spanners, and c-store cabinets. The constraint is usually the fuel brand image program, which publishes the colors and placement, plus a canopy that draws power from dusk to dawn every night of the year.
Gas Station Signs detailsRoad-height pylons, message boards for financing offers, service-drive wayfinding, and sale-weekend banners. For a franchise dealer the constraint is the manufacturer image program, which usually covers the main brand sign and leaves the service entrance, used lot, and directionals to a local shop.
Dealer & Shop Signs detailsMonument signs with tenant panels, halo-lit building letters, and interior suite signs. The constraint is identification: every visitor is arriving for the first time, slightly late, reading at driveway speed. Suite and door signs are built to the ADA standards cited above, with raised characters and braille.
Medical & Office Signs detailsMulti-tenant pylons, entrance monuments, and storefront signs that bring an incoming tenant up to your criteria. The constraint is turnover: panels have to swap without rebuilding the sign, across a portfolio spread over several municipalities.
Property Management Signs details
Whatever the vertical, the work runs through the same line. Our surveys and permitting desk measures the site, checks the power, and files with L&I or the township. Our designers put the concept on a photo of your actual building at scale. The sign is then built on Woodhaven Road in our own shop and set by our own install crews and crane trucks, so a tall install does not wait on a rental lift.
After it is up, the same number covers repair and maintenance for dark letters and storm damage, LED retrofits when the power bill gets old, and in-house printing for banners and window graphics between projects.
If you would rather start from the hardware than the vertical, the sign types pages compare all eight formats side by side.
Six pages do not cover every buyer. Our portfolio also carries a credit union branch, a home health care office, orthodontic and dental practices, and the Islamic Center monument on East Luzerne Street.
The process behind those jobs is identical to the process behind a pylon on Street Road. Survey the site, find out what the code and the landlord allow, design to that, build it, and set it. If your building has a wall, a lot, or a pole, call the shop and describe it.
Send a photo of the building, plus your sign criteria or brand standard if you have one. We will survey it and quote the whole job.
267-344-8492