Here’s the transcript from Mark Kipp’s presentation:
Ryan: So now what I would like to do is I move on to the speaker portion of our meeting today and Mark and I met at an event called Business Spotlight a few months ago.
Ryan: And we’ve seen each other each month and his business Vector Sign Solutions can help businesses mark where customers come to do business with them. So, everyone I’d like to introduce to you, Mark Kipp, who’s going to talk to us about designing a sign for our business.
Ryan: So, Mark, you have the floor.
Mark: OK, thank you Ryan, I’m gonna share my screen, let’s see.
Mark: So, as Ryan said, I’m Mark Kipp with Vector Sign Solutions, I’m going to go quick.
Mark: A quick overview of signage so one gets an idea of the different signs that are out there.
Mark: Plus, what we help companies produce.
Mark: We have a tagline “Helping guide your image through signage”.
Mark: Everyone that has a business, most business have a brand and they’re trying to promote.
Mark: We’re not trying to go in there and overshoot it, or you know, blast over; we’re trying to augment it and make it work better for the company.
Mark: So, in general, there are I kind of categories, 3 different areas of signs that we help with exterior, interior and vehicle graphics and I’ll break down each of these a little bit further- so the exterior there tends to be channel letters or monuments.
Mark: The interiors you have your wall graphics and signs.
Mark: I’ll get to that later, which via lobby signs, window graphics, floor graphics and then the vehicles.
Mark: So, starting with the exterior side of things, most people have seen plenty of these signs.
Mark: Drive by, don’t pay much attention to him, don’t know really what goes into it.
Mark: And these are called channel letter signs.
Mark: So, I have a few examples here.
Mark: What’s called channel letters.
Mark: It’s called channel letters because, out of aluminum there’s a channel which use it used to be 5 inches, usually about 3 1/2 inches deep.
Mark: It holds, now would be LEDs, it used to be a CFL or neon to light it up so they’re illuminated, either what’s called trump lit, which this is an example of front lit or Halo lit, which is backlit.
Mark: Just kind of reverse logic but just go with me on this, so this is an example of trying to use the brand but also understanding what happens at different times of the day, so as part of the brand for Hope Chiropractic, they have a blue.
Mark: The problem is blue does not illuminate well at night.
Mark: So, what we do is we use a perf, so at night it shows up as white, so it helps with the visibility.
Mark: So, these are things that we get into that you know, we’d never expect a customer to understand right off the bat that certain colors do illuminate, certain ones do not.
Mark: Here’s another example of Sun Lake Apartments. Maybe some of you people know of this facility it’s 126 near 37. They had some old signs and if you see on the left that was their old sign and they wanted to refurbish it, make it look nice.
Mark: So, on the right we did go to, and this is called a Halo lit sign and a multi colored. They can change the color like then this orange was probably at Halloween time. I know I drove by there the other day they had red and green for Christmas.
Mark: Now the reason I have the picture on the left was not only showing the old sign but showing what we did in the, when they when you took the old sign off it was just, uh, we kept the brick was already there, but it was kind of a blasé, there was nothing really behind it.
Mark: We actually added porcelain. It’s kind of visual. It’s a floor porcelain, it’s actually on the sign and it provides some reflectivity and just makes it look nice so they really wanted to upscale their brand and we helped them do that.
Mark: There’s another illuminated sign Big Dog Pizza, this is in Noblesville. It also illuminates at night.
Mark: Not all channel letter signs need to illuminate.
Mark: We have done a couple or they don’t want him illuminated ’cause it costs a little bit more and you have to hook it up to electricity.
Mark: Now, another aspect of exterior signs is monument signs, and this is one we just did. Also, near 126 and 37, childcare and preschool.
Mark: What’s interesting about these signs are that it looks brick or brick and mortar. It’s not. This is actually foam, and it’s a much more cost-effective solution.
Mark: One can still do brick and mortar. You’re going to pay a lot for it. These are very sturdy, they’re in the ground, held in with poles, they’re not going to blow away, and they’re very durable and we can make the brick match the brick about whatever facade of the real building.
Mark: And that’s what we did in this case.
Mark: Then on the interior side of things, you have wall graphics and signs.
Mark: This is example sign.
Mark: We recently did this one.
Mark: This is just an acrylic sign room number kind of giving a little more class to it.
Mark: And yeah, this is just in Noblesville.
Mark: And then here’s a couple more where we can get into ADA signage, particularly with your stairwell sign on the left, where you know, you can’t really see it, but down near the bottom, under the fire door, keep close that there’s Braille for ADA, so we’re, we know how to make the ADA signs. This is very helpful when you, particularly moving in to a new facility and you need all new signs.
Mark: A lot of them for the Fire Marshall we can help with that too.
Mark: You know fire marshals of each city kind of call the shots of what needs to be in a building.
Mark: The graphic on the left, or right, sorry, it’s just Burn Boot Camp that they had painted their wall blue.
Mark: We just put vinyl on top of that and so that’s where you get the blue background with the white and yellow text.
Mark: But we can, we can do various sizes. That’s actually probably an 8-foot-wide wall, so it does get pretty sizable.
Mark: There was another big one. There’s about 10-feet-wide sign. This is also here in Noblesville, Taekwondo Academy, so we just, you know, put that on the wall.
Mark: It kind of helps make the wall less plain, and that’s what people want to do with their windows and walls.
Mark: If you know, hotels might be good for this, they’re always revamping, want to have, you know, new look to the interior, the company wants to have something on the walls other than just plain painted walls.
Mark: We can do wonderful graphics, wonderful things with fabric now too.
Mark: So, I don’t, if you see my screen behind me, I have some pictures of my departed dog, but that’s on fabric.
Mark: More interior graphics. This was at a church so it just you know they have walls, they need to have a message put up there. These can be pretty sizable walls too.
Mark: And then you have your lobby signs also fall into the interior graphics. So, we just did the Uptown Cafe. This is an LED lit lobby sign, acrylic based, so it’ll show up better at night with the LEDs, but at least it’s a unique sign to add some class to the establishment.
Mark: You know, it’s got the Uptown logo, it makes the reception area less plain. You know, helps sell the brand that people know they’re in the right place and people really love it.
Mark: The other one, Northern Prairie Financial, I get a much bigger picture here of what it actually looks like. Is a sandblasted cedar sign and then hand painted and then the gold on the Prairie is gold leaf so you can add here again, match the brand of the company that wanted to do this.
Mark: It’s a financial planning company and they wanted that rustic look. They’re up in Minnesota and so we helped them do that. The burgundy and the red is what they particularly wanted, and so this is, this is where we can help and organize this and make good signs for people.
Mark: Window graphics- a lot of times if it’s in the exterior window, would go with what’s called perf so you can see out of it. Uh, it usually it’s one way, but not always.
Mark: You know where you know people can see the message looking into the building and when you’re inside the building you can still see outside, at least you can see the parking lot looking the other way.
Mark: There’s floor graphics- my people have seen the floor graphics now with COVID you know 6-foot distance things like that. That’s a prime example. You have to make sure they’re non-skid.
Mark: This is another example of a floor graphic. Actually, I should be in a garage. Person actually wanted, he lives in the Sagamore golf area, and wanted to decorate his floor garage. He was actually adding epoxy flooring and we put the graphics down and then they put the epoxy floor around it.
Mark: And now we’re into the last category vehicle graphics, and we’ve, I’ve purposely said graphics. I don’t want, we don’t want to get into vehicle wraps, color change, things like that. That’s more personal. There are people who specialize in that.
Mark: We’re mostly here, we’re trying to help businesses, help to promote their brand. In this case, here’s Hoods Locksmith. That yellow key is very keyed to him and we found a great color vinyl to put on his on his van and just, and of course the other thing you can see.
Mark: There’s some curves in the van that makes it some trickiness to add at the text but we did it and he really loves it. This is what we do.
Mark: We help, I could you could if you saw this van just driving around before I put the graphics on you would just OK, it’s a van. Once we put all the graphics on, man it was it was night and day in terms of, now he’s promoting himself, right?
Mark: This is this is one of the great advertising vehicles and no pun intended advertising media out there to get the point across.
Mark: You have to make sure you don’t make it too busy.
Mark: He, you know you’re going at 35 miles an hour, you maybe have 5-10 seconds to get somebody’s attention, so you keep it simple. Have the logo, have some, you know, website, phone number and it’s all there.
Mark: There’s another example of a van graphics that we did for a company on contract.
Mark: And that’s pretty much it for, well, what I’ve got to share, I’m open to questions if people have some. You know, what they saw in terms of the exterior, interior and vehicle graphics type discussion.
Ryan: Mark, I have a question for you. You mentioned early on, with Hope Chiropractic’s logo. The concept of illumination and what colors work there. So, what colors generally stick out the best when coming up with an illuminated sign?
Mark: Well, clearly white, and sometimes white is going to be your best. But here again it depends. You know, sometimes we have a client we’re going to be working on. We actually have term what’s called a black out or blackout. So, you buy black, black out, and so your logos, actually, what’s not black and so by default it becomes white. As opposed to actually printing a white.
Mark: Uh, so there’s that aspect. There’s also whether your Halo effect like we it, showed like the sun light, you can get into any different- that’s what’s called RGB LED, so it’s red, green, blue. They can make many colors out of that depending on the time of the year, but your blues, your blacks, those are well, black’s not going to illuminate much at all. You’re mostly trying to block out then, or sell your purples and things. Yellow would probably be OK.
Mark: You want to be on the lighter shade of things, maybe, uh, you know, lighter red could be OK. You don’t want to go too dark and red, you just have to think about at night. You know what, how do your eyes see things, right? And the darker the shade, the less likely it’s going to illuminate and you’re going to be able to see it very well, so it all depends what else is in the graphic.
Mark: If it’s just text, you want to focus on picking a color that’s going to illuminate well.
Mark: We’ll go with the perf if you really need your branded color.
Mark: If you have other part other things going on in the graphics, it probably doesn’t matter as much anymore because then the other things start to highlight and you can, your mind can probably start to figure out what color that is.
Mark: Yeah, usually what you get with Halo though is you do want a darker color on the face because now you’re light shining against the facade. You want to light colored for sides.
Mark: So, now you want you want your letters to be darker, so it creates more of that Halo, it’s you know Halo effect.
Ryan: So then, let’s jump topics.
Ryan: I’m sorry Kim, did you have a question?
Kim : Oh, I just was curious if uhm, did you say you do neon, neon lighting?
Mark: We do not, neon’s kind of moving away, it’s a specialty anymore. We don’t have the capability to do in neon. It’s expensive. Yeah, there’s probably one or two places in Indy that that can repair neon.
Mark: Most everyone going LED. For a number of reasons, LEDs last longer, they don’t take as much power, the power supplies don’t wear out as quickly. They don’t hum.
Mark: Yeah, the Halo lights hum or I mean the neon lights hum, the power supplies too so. Yeah, anymore, it’s going to be LED unless you have a specific reason to go neon, but then then it’s a specialty job.
Kim : I see. Good information, thank you.
Marty: Well Mark, I have a question to the LED. The reason why I don’t know all the things about lighting, but I can see why LEDs would be better than fluorescent or all these other neon lights because don’t LEDs just last and last and last.
Mark: The LEDs themselves do. You still have a power supply, and that’s still a failure point. Not as dramatic as a neon power supply ’cause it’s not being challenged as much- heat is what hurts most electronics.
Mark: So, what’s called a ballast or power converter for neon is getting hit pretty bad with heat, and so it’s not going to last as long but yeah, the LEDs don’t take much power. I will get back to the neon, as much as we don’t do neon, we can do neon-like, like they have LED tubes that look like neon.
Mark: So, you could get a neon effect with LED now.
Marty: Yeah, the reason why I asked is ’cause I use a lot of assorted lights in my studio and because newborn babies and the like, they blink a lot. If you have a strobe. So, I use a ring light and it’s got a 50,000 hour LED light ring and they’re so bright and you can turn them up and down and it doesn’t cause babies to blink and things like this. So, I’m very happy with that light because the way it lasts, and the power, it’s like I can always count on it, just always count on it.
Mark: Yeah, sorry, and LEDs are certainly dimmable. You know it’s all a matter how much current you’re putting through them, and that’s what you’re saying. You could control the light with them much more controllable and now that they, it was only in probably the last 10 years they’ve really improved the white.
Mark: It used to be, you’d always get your amber or yellow. Your red and your green, maybe Blues came out later, right? Whites even came out after that, and the reason is because you’re, really white LEDs are blue LEDs that are coated with phosphor. So, you need the blue of these first. It’s kind of interesting.
Mark: That’s why you may say a lot of a lot of initial white LEDs have that very strong blue tint to them, because they’re really blue LED. As a matter of how they’ve been trying to soften them up, there are ways that they soften them. You can buy LEDs and different light soft, it’s just like incandescent bulbs, right?
Mark: You can get the daylights, you can get the soft and then those are things that you know, it depends how you just want to how you buy ‘em from the manufacturer.
Speaker 6: Oh, awesome.
Ryan: So Mark, let’s kind of jump topics and talk the concept of branding your vehicle or signing your car.
Ryan: What kind of tips could you offer someone as far as like, you know, making sure their designs are easy to read or in any way effective?
Mark: Well, the first thing is going to be what type of vehicle we’re putting out. Certainly, vans have much more space. If you’ve got a sedan, sometimes like in, well, we do we split ours, you know. Even on our own we got two vehicles here at the company. We have a sedan, we go with a magnet. An 18 by 24 magnet that fits on the side door and there’s some advantages to that if you have it, but you definitely want, you know, you gotta decide.
Mark: Usually you get a website, you got a phone number and you got a name. Maybe you have an icon and you gotta decide which is going to be the most prominent thing to you that you want to promote and that’s what you want to really make bigger, you don’t want to go much more than that.
Mark: You don’t want to put all these small little text things because people aren’t going to be able to read it.
Mark: Even, we have people come to say on the back of their pickup truck they want to put all these, you know, we do residential, commercial, but all this stuff- nobody is gonna read it.
Mark: So yeah, phone number, you want to be large. Unless you want people going to your website then make that large. And just like that, the Hoods Locksmith hoods you know his work pretty well.
Mark: Hoods was huge, right? So Hoods, right? They said locksmith and then that key the icon was critical there to make it stand out. The bold yellow right? Everyone knows that’s a key.
Mark: It you get the idea across if you have that kind of luxury in your brand that you can have that icon that just sticks out that you want. What do you want to promote?
Mark: And then, so also in the van, you’re going to have to driver, side passenger side, and the back.
Mark: There’s also if you have more window space than, or if you have a van that has windows, we can get into window perf on vehicles as well, and usually want to stick with the phone number there on website.
Mark: We’ll say those don’t quite last as long from a color standpoint, sun, the sunlight is evil to print, it just fades it. It’s just going to do that and the more we can do cut vinyl versus digital print, they’ll make it a little less, a little bit longer, and no matter what sun going to make it fade, and then window perf is going to even fade quicker than what you put on the side of the metal and just you have to be aware of that, but you have, you know we’d have to see what type of vehicle someone has, and what makes the most sense at the time to get the message across. And when someone’s all they’ve got is a window in the back, say an SUV. You’re going to perf it.
Ryan: Does anyone have any other questions for Mark?
Ryan: Not all at once.
Jeannette: I have a funny sign story that I’ll share. I do taxes and I work from my home so I have a sign in the front yard that has just says taxes and it has my phone number on it. So that’s more for the convenience of my clients coming in so they know when they’ve arrived at my house. But I had somebody drive by one day and my phone rang. And it was a Kentucky cal,l well people moved from other states, they keep their numbers, that sort of thing and the person on the other end wanted to know if I was selling my house for the taxes. No, I wouldn’t advertise it if I was in trouble. But no, I do income taxes.
Jeannette: So, I’ve toyed with the idea of putting a, just getting a magnet to go on the side of my car with just taxes and my phone number. The problem being, my car spends most of the time in the garage, so I don’t drive my car a whole lot, right? Now when I was doing more networking in person. I drive about 8000 miles a year, but last year I drove 2000 miles so I don’t get a lot of exposure from my vehicle. But I thought that was interesting that that was his assumption.
Mark: No matter how hard you try. There’s gonna be someone that’s not taking your message the way you anticipated.
Ryan: Well, if there are no other comments or questions, Oh yes Kim.
Kim: Hey, sorry about that, but uhm Jeanette triggered me to ask a question. Mark, Do you guys do yard signs?
Mark: We do.
Kim: OK, and we are actually in the market to reprint ours. Ours are a plastic sheath right now and they’re a wire-U, if you will, you know and well, number one, we’re about out of them for Culligan water, but #2, wires, they rust and I hate having them in my car because they get everywhere and then the plastic sheets like a garbage bag material and I don’t know they get holes poked in them and stuff like that. So we’re looking at a different way to do that, probably on the corrugated board, like you probably do.
Mark: Yes, right?
Kim: I’m just thinking of the best way. Could you take down my email or I’m driving so I can’t type it in? Do you mind taking my email?
Mark: Yeah, I did exactly.
Kim: And sending me at least at minimum, your contact information and maybe some information about those.
Mark: OK.
Ryan: Awesome, well, let’s give Mark a hand for his presentation today.
