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

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

6 Entrance Signs That Have Stood the Test of Time

November 11, 2016 By Mark Hackley

Waynesboro Florist,
Downtown Retail Signage

Back in the mid-nineties I created a new sign for Webber Payne, owner of Waynesboro Florist. I used to fabricate all my own cedar and redwood sign panels. Now, being a smaller shop, I sometimes order panels already glued up and ready to route, carve, or sandblast. The three-foot high by five-foot tall wood sign we made for Webber’s shop has served him well over the years.
Last month, Webber contracted a painting company to repaint his downtown shop. At that point, he decided to hire me to restore his sign back to its earlier glamour while he was at it.
An important feature of well-made cedar and redwood signs is durability: the wood is naturally rot and insect resistant and it holds up for a lifetime of service when regularly maintained. Augusta Sign Company repainted the sign and custom ceiling bracket, carefully restoring the colorful entry sign for another twenty years of faithful service attracting customers into the store!

Waynesboro Mennonite,
Dimensional Wall Graphics

Sometimes sign projects don’t have to be glamorous. Such was the case when I provided a set of dimensional injection-molded plastic wall letters for a local church back in the early 1990’s. The letters are pretty standard– made from a standard mold in a standard plastic color with standard mounting hardware! Although they were basic letters they still had to be custom-fit to the wall in which they were mounted.
The manufacturer of the letters on this project is one of the premier letter suppliers in my industry. Chances are, if you order dimensional letters from a local shop, they will come from the same place. An important benefit of using dimensional letters from this supplier is that all their products have a lifetime warranty against breakage, cracking, fading, and so on. Therefore, if you use dimensional letters from Augusta Sign Company for your entrance signage, you are guaranteed to have a long-lasting product!

Hollister, Stuarts Draft:
Plant Entrance Signage

When I owned and operated Tree Street Signs in Crimora I placed many plant entrance signs in service. Back in the 1990’s we made the signs for the DuPont Lycra facility which is no longer there; we made the sign for McKee that still stands; we made the signage at Rental Uniform Service, now Cintas, and we made the corporate entrance signs for Hollister in Stuarts Draft, among many others.
The Hollister signs were made in the mid-90’s and to my knowledge, have not been maintained since. The painted aluminum signs are still doing their job, but they are at the point where restoration should be considered.
The architectural metal signs were finished with acrylic enamel, the same paints used for auto finishes, and lettered with high performance 3M vinyl graphics, which have an expected 10-year outdoor lifetime. Needless to say, both the paint and vinyl graphics have outlasted expectations. Augusta Sign Company was born from a company that understood long-term sign construction so you can trust that your signs will be built to last!

McDow Funeral Home,
Architectural Monument Sign

Buried deep beneath the McDow Funeral Home sign is a cache of extra brick that matches the sign. The buyer, now deceased, Tim McDow, requested that the brick be buried to ensure a good match if they ever decided to expand the sign later.
The sign, constructed in the early nineties, still looks great! I provided minimal maintanence in 2011 when the organization added a crematory and I updated the lettering and painted the stucco to refresh the sign background.
With training in architectural design, I offer a level of design service that other local competitors may not be capable to do. I enjoy working with customers and local masons to come up with long-lasting aesthetic sign designs.
It may sound weird, but I am confident that many of the sign structures I have made will outlast me here on this earth. Maybe that’s why we call them monument signs!

Waynesboro Free Methodist,
Custom Cedar Signage

Wood signs make great options for churches. They look nice and last a very long time when proper materials are utilized. The sign I built for the Waynesboro Free Methodist Church was one of the first redwood signs I put in place.
Not long after taking a week-long sign-building workshop in Vermont, I began building quality custom wood signs around Waynesboro and the Shenandoah Valley. And these signs still stand to this day, a living testament of their quality.
The long, monolithic, horizontal sign design was something I patterned to the looks of signage I had begun to build for Wintergreen Resort in the early 1990’s. These types of sign designs are easy to light and look great in colorful landscaping beds.
This sign has been well-maintained by church members. The location of this particular sign at a busy intersection has gotten loads of attention over the past 25 years and I hope it has helped attract new members and visitors to the church!

Gypsy Hill Park,
Sandblasted Park Signs

Unique sign shapes and typefaces add eye-appeal to signs. Back in the early 1990’s I had the opportunity to help design the signage for Gypsy Hill Park, and later helped with Montgomery Hall Park which used a similar design theme.
Steve DeVenny, Superintendent of Parks and Recreation, hired me to make the signs originally. A few years ago, Steve hired me again to maintain and update the signs. The City changed logos so we came up with a way to add the new logo to existing signs by fabricating painted metal ovals that covered the old dimensional lettering while providing a background for the new brand.
After twenty years, the old signs were battered and mildewed, but after restoration they were as good as new. I treated the surfaces with bleach before repainting and used a two-part epoxy to fill big defects. The project involved multiple signs and I took great care to make sure colors were consistent on all the signs throughout the two parks. I believe the signs are good for another twenty years. I wonder if Steve and I will be around the next time maintenance is required? Only time will tell.

Mark Hackley owns and operates Augusta Sign Company in Waynesboro, was founder of Tree Street Signs of Crimora in the 1990’s, and served as an account representative for Holiday Signs of Chester. He began his sign career as a civil servant in the Department of Defense, learning the trade at the National Naval Medical Center and Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.

Wood Sign Restoration

November 7, 2016 By Mark Hackley

Reviving the Color

Wood sign restoration is what I love to do! I made Webber Payne’s sandblasted wood sign in the mid-1990’s, and he recently contacted me to restore the sign back to its original brightness that grabbed attention of shoppers in downtown Waynesboro, Virginia.

The process of restoring redwood and cedar signs is not difficult, it just requires multiple steps and knowledge about what materials work best and last the longest. First, me and my helper Marshall Carpenter took the sign down and transported it to my sign shop in Waynesboro. Next, I ordered the colors needed, which is getting harder all the time as hand-painted signs are becoming a lost art along with neon as digital sign techniques and LED technology take over the industry. While waiting for the paint to arrive I steel brshed and sanded the background, filling any major gaps with painters putty. Once the materials came in I mixed up a custom color purple stain to match the existing background color and coated out the entire sign. (I choose not to reveal my background stain recipe that I developed in the 1990’s…kind of like the Kentucky fried Chicken recipe, or McDonald’s Big Mac secret sauce.)

Next I primed the letters white and painted all the flat areas to complete the sign. I hung the sign and touched up any edges that needed it. (The photo of the sign hanging here in this feature was taken before final touch-ups, but it’s hard to see any issues from the distance in the picture.)

Mark Hackley owns and operates Augusta Sign Company, Waynesboro, VA 540-943-9818

Changing Letters on Entrance Signs

October 24, 2016 By Mark Hackley

Changing letters on entrance signs is a typical request at my sign shop in Waynesboro, Virginia, Augusta Sign Company. This particular week, I had a long-term care customer contact me to change the tag line letters on their sign from Senior Living Center to Assisted Living.

The existing letters were injection molded plastic characters with straight back edges. It’s important to order matching letters from a sign company that understands the various letter options, so your letters match when changing part of the wording. There are rounded formed letters, then there are solid, flat-cut out letters made on CNC routers, and each has it’s own visual characteristics. Colors and sheen are also important to match, but in this case, it was easy: matte black, Helvetica font. If you ordered the original lettering from a company that’s still in business, it makes the most sense to order any updates in the sign lettering from the same company. That way things should match, since most sign companies keep old project specifications for some time.

HOW MUCH DOES IT ALL COST?

How much does it cost to change lettering on existing signs? It depends on the size and type of lettering and the height off the ground. In this case, non-illuminated plastic letters stud-mounted to a low profile brick and concrete monument sign, the cost was under $1,000. Of course, illumination, size and quantity of letters, logos, etc., would add cost.

It was fairly simple to make the changeout in this case: first, I used a stiff putty knife to remove the old letters; next I used a paper pattern with stud holes marked to drill the holes for mounting; next I cleaned and painted the concrete background with a flat, white, self-priming paint that matched the existing paint color; next I installed the dimensional letters using clear silicone, taping the letters that needed help until the silicone adhesive cured in less than 30 minutes.

Mark Hackley is the owner and operator of Augusta Sign Company, Waynesboro, VA (former founder of Tree Street Signs of Crimora) 540-943-9818