A common misconception is that outdoor signs are essential only in the retail industry and offices. While businesses, retail stores, and offices often take advantage of signs, they aren’t the only entities that benefit from these visual aids. Great signage is also vitally important for public organizations, institutions, and even schools.
Today, we’re going to look at why any school should make sure it has outdoor signs on display, what makes a good school sign, and how to ensure that all of your signs properly reflect the mission and values of your school.
Why Do Your Schools Must Have a Signage?
Often when thinking about signage, we primarily imagine letters over the establishment’s front door, but there are many other types of signs. School safety must be paramount, so the school uses signs to promote it.
Plenty of signs can communicate how to evacuate classrooms in the event of a fire, where the fire extinguisher and first aid kits are kept, and how to contact the school nurse. Signs can also be posted in bathrooms to reiterate the recommendation to wash hands before interacting with other students or in corridors to explain that running is not allowed in the hallways.
Signage is helpful for more than safety information: it can also be deployed to encourage students to observe the school’s dress code or inform them about the social messaging channels available.
1. Signages Give Messages to Everyone
School signage is not only concerned with displaying messages to students but can also be used externally to communicate with the general public.
Institutions of all kinds are no different from companies. Branding and marketing are essential to convey a message, and signage certainly helps.
Schools have a lot of places to advertise their achievements, such as having exceptional inspection scores, a high pass rate among students, or even famous alumni. This can help parents feel they can trust their children with one of the school’s capable hands.
2. Signages Strengthen Trust and Reputation
There are many ways to foster a sense of trust, not just on the message board. As well as choosing the right words to put on the sign, you must also consider how you will say them.
In terms of visual outdoor sign design, the typography, colors, and layout choices can all contribute to the perceived reputation of an institution.
For example, certain typefaces tend to be associated with specific values. Serif fonts (such as Times New Roman and Baskerville), which have little hooks at the end of particular strokes, are often used to evoke tradition, heritage, and old-school trustworthiness and can be used in any school with a long history.
On the other hand, sans-serif fonts can suggest modernity and progressiveness at technology colleges, which prioritize STEM subjects. This makes them ideal for schools like ours.
Because of the power of color associations to influence people’s emotions, marketing professionals have long known the effectiveness of using colors to brand their products (for example, Cadbury uses purple because people associate it with luxury and opulence. Purple is precisely why they choose it).
We might want to use colors that invoke value, such as trust and quality for schools. These are often best embodied by darker and more muted colors such as blacks, blues, browns, and grays (for more information on color psychology in general, please see our blog post on the subject).
3. Signages Inspire Students
Children and young adults spend a lot of time in school environments; outdoor signs are a big part of that.
Messages and imagery can be used in signs to share words of study information or inspiration and help reduce stress. This is important for students facing deadlines in their dissertations.
Even though no piece of signage has to be a placard placed near a door, many spaces can use printed signs to give the walls a unique character.
Study stress is one of the biggest worries that students have, but there is one even bigger: the first day at school when even finding your classroom can be challenging. For some very small students, navigating the halls of the school can be scary.
Conclusion
Schools are now using more signs than ever to promote their values and mission, which are their primary functions. In addition to this, they also play an essential role in maintaining school safety.
At Reliable Sign Services, we understand the power of outdoor signs and how they can help improve the school and community. We are ready to provide schools in McCalla, Alabama, the expertly designed school outdoor signs that will help you remain more connected, achieve more, and inspire greatness. Contact us today to get quotations.