5 Good Reasons To Wrap Your Vehicles

March 28, 2017 By Mark Hackley

5 Good Reasons to Wrap Your Vehicles

Switch Old Yellow Page Advertising Dollars to Investments in Eye-Catching, Moving Billboards

Here are 5 Good Reasons to Wrap Your Vehicles at your business in Waynesboro, Staunton, and Augusta County, Virginia. Companies are replacing investments in Yellow Page ads with electronic digital signs and vehicle wraps, the two best advertising bangs for their bucks these days.

Back in late November, I closed a deal to letter 2 vans and a box truck for Vailes Heating and Air of Fishersville, Virginia. In early December, my mother got sick and I had to put the project on hold. My mom passed away in January, and I did not start on the vehicle re-branding project until late January, early February. After I did the first van, the customer decided to re-brand seven vans instead of two, and I completed them all this week.

The customer chose what I term “partial vehicle wraps” where in this case the bottoms of the vehicles boast bold, blue wavy stripes that cover the entire lower portion of the vehicles, while the tops sport traditional cut vinyl graphics. The renovated fleet of vehicles is eye-catching. Every day I see one of the new vehicles on the road and they now keep up with competing companies’ vehicle advertising out there on the streets of Augusta County!

Re-Brand Your Vehicles for Brand Continuity

Vailes Heating and Air offers several services and they used different vans to promote them: Home Renovations, Heating and Air, Plumbing, Pools and Spas. Their old vans suffered what we termed “brand crisis” and it was hard for customers to figure out what Vailes was all about as their vehicles sped down the road or pulled up in their drive.

After meeting with the C-Level people in charge of business strategics, we decided to highlight the Vailes name and sub-highlight the various services. They developed a main brand and three sub-brands with the help of a local graphic designer, and the new vehicle graphics weave the various identities together so the branding makes sense and is consistent across all the vehicles and brands.

Make a Worn-Out Fleet Look Like New For Less

Over time a corporate fleet can get ragged.

The Vailes fleet consisted of standard Chevy and Ford vans. They were the typical, basic-white work vans and were fairly the same size and design so that the graphic design stayed consistent across all the vehicles. The only slight variation was that the Ford body lines accommodated a shorter bottom stripe than the Chevy’s.

The old vehicle graphics were not only inconsistent, but were also faded and deteriorated. The old graphics were removed with chemicals and heat, and the vehicles were buffed before the new vinyl graphics were applied. One of the administrators at Vailes said the vehicles looked like new after they were re-lettered, and commented on the cost difference to renovate the vans with graphics versus buying a whole new fleet of vehicles. That was great information to consider as companies make these types of decisions.

Create 24-Hour Visibility of Your Brand

Every day I go to Lowes or Wal-Mart or any place that has a big parking lot in town, I notice the many brands of area businesses on parked vehicles. It’s hard to miss them unless you’re blind. They are everywhere and are becoming the new way to spend advertising dollars. When you letter your car, truck or van you create a moving billboard that is out there working every day!

The neat thing about vehicle lettering as an advertising tool is that you can choose how much you want to spend. It’s like taking an ad out in the paper or Yellow Pages. You can have a one-line or one-column black and white ad or a full-page, full-color charmer. That’s completely up to you. For Augusta Sign Company, I personally choose to use a set of magnets with my brand for my front doors and a decal on my spare tire cover in the back, but some people want full vehicle wraps.

Full wraps take lots of talent and experience and I just don’t have the patience to tackle them on a regular basis, but I’d recommend using some new guys in the field for that: Walter and Geiger Hansen at Viking Forge Design in Waynesboro. I’ve been in their shop a few times and the last time I was there they had wrapped an entire car and it looked like it was painted. God bless them for having the skill patience to be able to do this!

Keep Up With The Jones’s

Many of your competitors have already produced flashy vehicle advertising that is getting lots of chatter out in the community. It’s your choice to keep up or not. I personally don’t want to be swamped with business that I would not be able to keep up with being a small sign shop. But if you want more work, then professional vehicle wraps are a great way to go!

Consider partial wraps to save money. The construction services company that hired me to letter their fleet had gotten pricing on full wraps that were more than double the cost of my partial wrap solutions. It never hurts to shop around.

I guess that about wraps it up!

Mark Hackley is owner of Augusta Sign Company in Waynesboro, VA 22980 540-943-9818

Five Advantages of Carved Wood Signs

March 1, 2017 By Mark Hackley

Five Advantages of Carved Wood Signs

Five advantages of carved wood signs over say choosing other various forms of signs are not really hard to see, if you look closely.

First, the main advantage is interest. The carved letters make the letters interesting. Since light reflects at an angle, the V-Carved letters serve to boost reflectivity. Add gold leaf and, “Wow!”

“The lettering on our new church directional sign looks great,” said Kenneth Lee of Rodes United Methodist Church in Nelson County, Virginia. I just completed a carved wood sign for Mr. Lee after his former sign was destroyed during routine mowing. (See accompanying photos of this nice little sign.)

Here are four more advantages of carved wood signs:

Carved signs last a long time: Since the wood is usually cedar, redwood, or mahogany, these species are insect and rot resistant. With 10-year maintenance periods, the signs will long outlive most sign buyers!

Carved signs value is much greater than signs made with less-precious materials and less-tedious labor. These signs are truly the Cadillacs of signs, but if you’re okay with a Kia then that’s your prerogative.

Carved signs can be designed to blend in with the environment, yet stand out as graphics.

Carved signs look awesome when spot-lit!

I’m sure there are even many more reasons why your church, your professional office, your medical practice, your law firm, your downtown retail store, your florist, your retirement center, your hospital, your school, your veterinary clinic, (see where I’m going here?) would choose a carved wood sign over other options. Let us know if you’d like to see your name in WOOD!

WOODN’T YOU? I SURE WOOD! (But I’m partial.)

Mark Hackley is owner of Augusta Sign Company, Waynesboro, VA 22980

Decals – an easy way to brand your retail store

February 15, 2017 By Mark Hackley

Decals – an easy way to brand your retail store

Last week I was contracted to make and install about 30 decals of a well-known brand of residential and commercial paint. The owner of two retail stores, one in Waynesboro, Virginia and one in Staunton, had renovated their store interiors, repainting the shelving fixtures in an updated color. When they repainted the store fixtures, they painted over the old logos, so they hired me to make new ones.

The shelves ranged in width from about 48″ to 65″ and the decals were designed to fit all widths. I provided a scaled sketch and presented a color swatch of the decal color. The customer could not get a copy of the logo in vector format, so I was able to vectorize what they provided as a jpg. The project took about 10 days to complete from the time I received their proof approval and deposit check, taking about a week to get the vinyl material, a day to cut and prepare the graphics, and a few days to schedule and make the final deliveries and installations at both stores.

Even though it was an interior application, I used high performance 10-year exterior Avery vinyl film for the decals so they will last a long time.

Mark Hackley, President of Augusta Sign Company, Waynesboro, VA 22980. 540-943-9818

Covers for Electric Signs

February 15, 2017 By Mark Hackley

Covers for Electric Signs

I frequently get calls from new customers who have purchased existing electric signs with their new business property within my service area of the Waynesboro, Staunton, Harrisonburg, Richmond, Winchester, Roanoke, Lynchburg regions of Virginia. They call me for pricing and timing needed to change their covers for electric signs. They regularly call “covers” what I call “faces” but what they are needing is new sign panels for electric signs.

I generally would need to survey their situations to get them an accurate price and turn-around time. Most often, these replacement signs fall into one of these types:

Least expensive type: Flat plastic sign panels of either acrylic (Plexiglas) or polycarbonate (Lexan) with either graphics on the outer surface or backsprayed.
Stronger type and best for thinner cabinets: What I call “pan” faces, which are vacuum-formed plastic signs made of either some type of acrylic or polycarbonate material with either graphics on the outer surface or backsprayed.
Or, Strongest of all and dimensional for added good looks: Embossed graphics on a pan face.

If you are in need of replacement covers for your lit sign in Central or Western Virginia, I would be happy to take a look.

Mark Hackley, Augusta Sign Company, 540-943-9818

How to Make a Sandblasted Wood Sign

January 31, 2017 By Mark Hackley

How to make a Sandblasted Wood Sign

RECIPE FOR A WOOD SIGN

How to make a sandblasted wood sign should be well-explained in this article. Making a sandblasted wood sign, or any customized solid wood sign for that matter, begins with gluing up the raw boards stacked end on end with a high-grade exterior wood glue. My choice has always been West System brand marine epoxies. Clear, All-Heart, Vertical Grain (CAHVG) boards are the best grade for carving, routing or blasting, so after you purchase those, you want to rip them down on your table saw to a maximum of 7.25″ wide boards, the less the better to avoid the possibility of the finished sign panel bowing/cupping/warping out in the weather.

Glue and clamp the boards at about 80% tightness to avoid squeezing out the epoxy in the joints, using clamps on both sides of the panel spaced at 24 inches or so on center or less for even pressure. After curing overnight, remove the clamps and sand with a power sander starting with rough grit and ending with fine grit. An orbital sander works fine. After sanding and prior to sand-blasting, you have the choice to either apply a stencil (a thin rubber mask that can be cut with the desired design) directly on the bare wood, or prime and paint the panel and then affix the stencil. In the case of the sign shown for C.F. Richards Christian School in Staunton, Virginia, my subcontractor blasted the sign raw. The advantage of this method is that the stencil won’t pull the paint on the letters. The advantage of painting first is it’s a lot easier to paint the sign as you leave the stencil on the letters while staining the background, then you peel the stencil and the sign is done. However, that isn’t always the case, and more than half the time you have lots of touch ups or worst case is you end up having to re-sand, prime, and paint because the stencil pulls the finish.

In the case of the C.F Richards School example, I primed the background with a high-quality primer and then painted the lettering, logo, and borders with high-quality sign enamels. Since this was a one-sided sign with the back exposed, I also primed and painted the back. The aluminum posts and finials were black, so we decided to also paint the back black to match.

LASTING IMPRESSION-LOW COST PER MONTH

This sign, put into service in January, 2017 will last an undetermined time spanning many decades. The seemingly high cost per square foot is not as big a price as it seems when you calculate the cost per month (CPM) of the advertising. If the sign lasts 50 years with 3 maintenance periods and the monthly cost ends up being eleven dollars a month for very high-impact branding. Unfortunately, the C.F. Richards Christian School is not on a main thoroughfare, so the traffic count is mostly made up of parents, staff and neighbors and their friends living on the residential street where it’s located. Otherwise, if on a highly traveled street with high traffic count, the cost per impression would be extremely low at $11.00 a month. Compare that with TV, radio, magazine or newspaper advertising, and you’ll see that signage is one of the few marketing options that has great value. Kind of up there with blogging on the internet!!

Mark Hackley is owner/operator of Augusta Sign Company– A small business that designs, makes, installs and maintains custom wood signs for customers in Virginia. 540-943-9818 mark@augustasigncompany.com