Most people think about signage as a design problem. What does it say? How does it look? Does it match the brand guidelines? Those questions matter, but there’s one we ask even before those: How far away is the person reading this?
Distance changes everything about what a sign can do. Stand three feet from a sign, and you can read a full sentence. Stand across the aisle, and you’ve got about two seconds and room for a headline, maybe a price. That’s it. A sign that doesn’t account for that gap isn’t doing its job, no matter how good the design looks on-screen.
At Porchlight, distance is one of the first things we factor in, right alongside the message and the visual treatment. We design all three things together because they’re really the same decision.
Mapping a Signage Program
We think of a store in three layers, and each one has a different job:
- Overhead and aisle signage represents the “Where am I?” layer. Someone’s scanning it from across the store, so it has to be bold and simple, nothing more.
- Bay and category signage answers the “What’s here?” question. The shopper is a few feet away now, so a short headline can do real work.
- Shelf-edge and product callouts are where the detail lives because this is the only point where someone is close enough, and interested enough, to actually read it.
When these three layers are mapped together, the sign someone sees from 30 feet away and the one they see standing at the shelf aren’t competing with each other – they’re each doing their own job.
Less Signage, More Recall
More signs doesn’t mean more communication. Retail visual merchandising research has shown that cutting the number of signs in a zone actually improves recall because shoppers have more attention to give to each one. Fewer signs, more impact.
Across the home improvement retail environments we work in, digital and physical signals are increasingly working together. In-store screens and displays aimed at professional contractors already influence a meaningful share of purchase decisions, which means every physical sign in a zone is now competing with, and reinforced by, digital touch points as well.
What this Looks Like in Practice
Get the distance logic right, and the creative does what it was always meant to do: communicate the right thing at the right range. Brands we’ve built these programs for typically end up with fewer total signs and better recall because we designed the whole system together instead of bolting pieces on one at a time.
If you want to talk through what this could look like for your brand’s signage program, reach out to us using the form below.