Thinking Outside the Frame

Nothing is too much: some examples of the knowledge, experience, skills, attitude, philosophy and courage to meet any signage challenge

In our commodity-riddled society, you may be able to resist consumption, but you cannot resist its advertising. Signage innovators of today have realised that the ordinary wall or shop window may no longer meet the challenges of sign creation in this century.

Today, a sign will appear on the electric booms of shopping malls, the cathedrals of consumption. Through unanticipated sign placement, one is essentially ‘shopping’ before even entering the mall. Effective signage in an age of mass sign-absorption has to be not only creative, but also unexpected:

A sign that greets you from the inside of a public toilet door, for example, advertising effective treatment for burning urine, leads to super awareness of the sign, by the nature of the action you are performing when gazing upon it.

By pushing the limitations of classic sign conception, we are more and more receptive to its messages and whether we like it or not, we simply cannot help but look over our shoulders and glance one more time.

Novel Signage: Hear the Call

How do successful sign-makers meet these challenges? By taking the box, or the rectangle, to which the usual signs often conform, and leaping right out of it. A recent campaign by cell phone company Cingular® displayed a sign on the wall of a skyscraper, advertising its policy on dropped calls.

The word “calls” had been wrenched from the slogan of the sign and ‘dropped’ on the floor below, prompting onlookers immediately to look upwards. Signage has been expanded to occupy both sky and ground space and in doing so, creates an exception to the cellular phone signposts we see that barely command our comprehension.

Scrumptious Signmaking

The only thing better than a great sign is surely an edible one. Chocolate company Thorntons® decided on a truly delicious Easter campaign, with a massive billboard bejeweled with an array of giant chocolate bunnies, eggs and panels. Mesmerised Londoners took under three hours to devour the delectable signpost, surprising the sign creators who estimated the process would take about a week. Yet the success of this edible sign invention is that although the sign itself disappears within hours, the press, conversation and fascination that it induced has both lasting and enduring impact on the success of the campaign.

Perhaps this is the future of sign construction, a sign that makes you not only want look at it, but to eat it.

Razor-Sharp Sign Innovation

An advertisement for Bic® razors once constructed a massive billboard in an area just outside the city, where it could utilise a large green field as part of its campaign. The sign itself was white and blank, with the small company logo in the left bottom corner. Outside the frame, a huge, life-size razor had ‘shaved’ a line in the grass of the field all the way to the foot of the sign.

Until then, it may have seemed inconceivable that the main component of a sign could exist outside of the sign itself. But this example illustrates the possible future of billboard or any other type of signage; it is about meeting every signage challenge by dreaming outside of and far beyond the ordinary, four-sided box of bygone sign making, until every conceivable restriction that stifles the realm of signage is no longer conceivable or acceptable.

Should you require any outdoor signage assistance, please don’t hesitate to give the staff at iSpace and Signs360 a call on 1800 729 133, or alternatively you can email us.