ARCHITECTURAL SIGNAGE: CREATING A UNIQUE AND MEMORABLE IDENTITY FOR YOUR BRAND

Let’s say you’re feeling like treating yourself to a fun shopping trip, and your closest options are two shopping malls just down the street. One mall is a nice-looking building with a good number of stores; just another shopping mall that doesn’t stand out to you much. The second shopping mall has a gigantic, modern sign with the mall’s name at the entrance, the kind that makes you want to take a picture with it to post on your social media. Which mall would you choose to shop at? This is where architectural signage plays a huge role.

These days, people give a lot of weight to their experiences – customers are not just buying products, and employees are not looking to work for just any company. Everyone wants a brand to earn their loyalty first. And the best way for brands to do this is by providing experiences.

What is it?

Architectural signage is a term used to describe elements and sign solutions installed in a building to help with wayfinding, designed to harmonise with the architecture and strengthen brand identity. This signage has to bring an aesthetic to the space that compliments – or even creates – brand identity and needs to be functional and durable.

Now that we have the basics of signage and its purpose out of the way, let’s get into how incorporating this factor into your brand can be beneficial.

Drawing in new customers

Having attractive signage draws customers to your brand and is crucial in shaping their perspective of your brand. This is because the signage is the customers’ first introduction to the brand. Good signage should give customers basic information regarding what the brand is and does. In a study conducted by FedEx, they found that 68% of the participants thought a brand’s signage is a reliable reflection of the quality of its services and products. These results clearly prove that brands in Australia should be investing in signage as a part of their marketing strategies.

Reinforcing brand identity

While signage can draw customers into stores or make your brand headquarters stand out, the impact of signage doesn’t have to end there. You can take advantage of signage to tell your brand’s story even in your stores or office buildings, so customers, employees, and even clients resonate with your brand better. You can incorporate certain symbols, colours and catchphrases that are associated with your brand into your signage. This will help customers immediately associate the elements above with your brand and make it memorable for them.

One example of architectural signage that leaves a strong impression on anyone that comes across it is the eye-catching use of LED lighting to decorate the facade of 888 Collins Street in Melbourne.

Improve the experience of returning customers

Once you manage to create strong customer loyalty for your brand, it becomes very difficult to shake that, and customers are likely to choose you over your competitors. A great way to do this is to keep your customers excited about buying from your brand. There are many ways to do this: you may choose to revamp your branding to help create a fresh, more enhanced shopping experience or even install interactive displays and signage in your stores.

That’s all we have for you! Now that you know about some of the benefits good signage can bring, you’re probably already planning how to invest in signage for your own brand; definitely not a bad idea.