National Parks are an entity unto their own. State parks too. They have their own suppliers and sometimes impossible to follow sign specs. Someone once wanted me to cut a thin line map out of engineering grade reflective material. That wasn’t even going to come close to happening (it’s thick and metallized, really tough stuff that you can’t cut intricate shapes with any hope of weeding it.)
We just did a bunch of silk screen on powder coated aluminum wayfinding signs for a state park. This is one of those things that designers don’t spec cuz they don’t know about it, and custom one-off silk screen can be expensive at a traditional silk screen supplier. We’re not exactly inexpensive, but our business doesn’t rely on multiples and certainly not on silk screening alone. Plus we’re set up to do small one offs.
They also had a bunch of real porcelain graphics panels made, which are probably the toughest things out there as far as weatherability, BUT because porcelain is basically glass, they don’t stand up to intentional abuse. Nothing does. People suck.
The facings of DiBond are thin sheets of aluminum, but it’s a composite material where the facings sandwich a core of polyethylene. I think the main reason we used it had to do with it being a fraction of the weight of solid aluminum, which made transport and installation by park managers, technicians and wildlife biologists a lot easier.
Dibond is the brand name of the best of the lot of stuff that people call dibond. Actually here the off brands are called ePanel, with is also a dibond but can mean MaxMetal or any number of other products. It’s all about the thickness of the aluminum faces. Dibond Dibond has the thickest, but we’re talking the difference of mils (thousandths.) I actually prefer Maxmetal for direct printing because the face is more matte. It isn’t as bright white a product, but life is full of tradeoffs.
There’s also the matter of being fire-rated for indoor use. Sometimes you need a Class 1 or Class A panel and some of the off brands are not. Dibond is, as well as Dibond ePanel.
Porcelain would have definitely failed the bullet-impact specs we needed to meet.
There’s a suburban botanical garden a few miles from where I live where many of the smaller signs are porcelain. The visual branding is beautiful and the porcelain looks incredibly nice. Setting aside possible vandalism and accidents, they should last for many decades. I’d love to work on a project like that.
Anything will fail a bullet impact test as far as imaged graphics are concerned. With the possible exception of DirectEmbed or Alto aluminum panels, but even those will have holes. They won’t shatter like porcelain or phenolic. Those are images that have been transfered into the clear anodizing layer of aluminum. Nice stuff. Hmmm… I wonder if they have bullet tests on those…
Porcelain is, in theory, considered a 40 year product but no one will write a warranty for that. The base panel is steel and if not sealed completely or damaged, can be a problem.
Several years ago, one of the signs we designed for a very remote location made a pretty good target for shooters. It was a heavier-gauge aluminum that tended to dimple rather than let most bullets penetrate it.
There was one idiot in a group of jackrabbit hunters who got frustrated that his bullets weren’t going through the sign, so he got closer thinking that would make a difference. The last bullet he fired bounced back and hit him squarely in the forehead. Some people really are stupid.
Ah yeah, I guess it would have been good to mention it’s coroplast inserted into an A-Frame. I haven’t seen the exact location it’s planned to go, but my best understanding is that it’s going to be set on or near the sidewalk turn. I’m not the person selling the signs, I get handed job requests and told to make em look good, so I don’t know if the product choice is a budget concern or reusability or some other concerns.
And no worries about the comment chain, it’s actually really neat to read all the comments and hear about the different materials. I’m still only a couple years deep in professional sign work, and it’s always neat to learn more about other things.
As far as the design goes, I haven’t gotten official feedback on it yet, but the sales rep make it sound like the client doesn’t think it’s “popping” enough, so I’m expecting to get told to jazz it up somehow. Gotta wait till I actually get the notes, though.
Wait so you get the client’s notes through your sales rep??
My preemptive thoughts to jazz it up:
Maybe it needs something as simple as change the arrow to a strong, pure, happy yellow. And be sure it won’t print like stomach bile color…
Can you add the logo of the associated clinic? (If that were to make sense to their clients of course)
I prefer the layout of #2 but it feels more rigid than #1. I think that is because its so symmetrical. So in that sense I would consider putting Parking In Rear at the top, then the large arrow below that, then in one bottom section with dark background (the clinic logo,) Healthy Gut Solutions and Walks-Ins Welcome. This would shift some of that symmetry especially by having now smaller text in the bottom compared to Parking In Rear.
