Lawyers need exterior business signs just like any other self-employed professional, and they frequently select crisp matter-of-fact designs on white backgrounds. It then becomes Sign Source Solution’s job to bring these concepts to life.
As a vocation, lawyers have a unique relationship with sign makers in that they have a special term for the board that displays their names outside their offices; most lawyers call it a shingle. This is an old English term that’s still used today, even though the sign is no longer a hand-carved and painted wooden placard suspended from a perpendicular stick above the doorway on chains (where it could swing freely above a muddy sidewalk and creak ominously in the wind, as it was in medieval times.)
‘To hang a shingle and practice law’ is an important milestone in the career of any attorney. It still has legal implications too as establishing the professional’s name, that date they were ‘called to the bar’ (licensed), and their office location is how attorneys are tracked in our modern legal system.
Law firms need high-visibility signage at the front of their offices and rather than be fancy over-stylized branding exercises, most lawyer’s signs generally only have two focuses: the firm or barrister’s name and the type of law they practice.
Even though they’re bare bones affairs, these ‘establishment signs’ are still very important and will directly affect the success of the lawyers who work there everyday; a clearly visible front entrance sign can become the best marketing tool a legal business can ever secure, especially if they have a prominent location on a busy thoroughfare.
Storefront Signs Impact Busy Neighbourhoods
Such is the case with Kormans LLP’s new offices at 3173 Bathurst Street in Toronto on the N.E. corner of Bathurst and Woburn St. In the summer of 2019 the firm will move into this freshly renovated stand-alone building in this highly visible new location. Not only is Bathurst street one of Toronto’s busiest north-south vehicular traffic routes, it’s also at the top end of a vibrant niche community inside the city. Thousands of people will pass Korman LLP’s new office site every day and impressing them in a situation like this is what sign makers like us dream about.
Here are the designs we presented, and they were approved right away because this is just exactly the type of illuminated business signage that compliments stand-alone buildings and makes them look important, especially at night.
These big rectangular storefront signs will let all passers-by know exactly what business is occurring on the premises and how it can help them in their own lives.
LED Retrofit: We Replaced Fluorescent Tube Troughs with a Bold New LED Sign System
Sign Source Solution was thrilled to have been selected for the tricky task of replacing the exterior sign boxes and installing new sign systems. The decades old and very heavy steel boxes that once held illuminated Plexiglas panels had been ‘gutted’, and they were all empty when we got there; the florescent tubes and ballasts that had once been inside had already been removed by bricklayers and other professionals who’d spent time improving the outside of the building. But the original sign boxes still had to come down, and that was a big job.
The team had a very difficult time removing the original sign-boxes as they were forged from cold rolled steel in the nineteen seventies and not made of aluminum as they would have been in later decades. And to make matters worse, we could not use an overhead crane as we were too close to the hydro lines. So, we had to call in some outside help, and we were lucky these labourers were as skilled and strong as the job required, or we’d still be there struggling with those blessed boxes today!
Once we’d overcome that adversity, we set about designing a whole new sign system that would bring a new aesthetic to the exterior of this squat one-story building which used to be a tombstone and burial monument store.
You can see below all three places where we were contracted to create sign solutions.
Now look carefully at how #1 and #3 areas are so close together they touch. Indeed, the edges occupy the same space. One of the most impressive elements of this sign solution is how those boxes were joined, each cut away inside on a forty-five degree angle so essentially it became one wrap-around sign.
The insides were fashioned from state-of-the-art Allanson SPEEDLamps LED T12 fluorescent replacement bulbs have a built-in, Class-1, high power factor driver. They are rotatable with sealed end caps and are rated at 50,000 hours of lifetime (but how would anyone know? Do you think someone waited around to see if they really lasted that long?) The built-in LED driver (not a ballast) also reduces the time we spent making the signs and therefore it reduced the cost. The big savings however is in the power consumption.
We installed two of the three signs at the end of the July, right on schedule. The third will go up in August. The new sign boxes are made entirely from non-corrosive aluminum and by entirely we mean all four sides and the back of the box. New acrylic panels were printed, and the Allanson SpeedLAMP system was employed inside with power system guaranteed for five years and an expected power consumption that’s 75% lower than its older florescent ancestor.
Want some more details? The insides are made by Allanson which is a North American company that have no overseas manufacturing. That means the product that has very high-quality control and a good warranty as opposed to systems that come from Asian manufacturers at lower cost but which have no warranty and no quality control.
Allanson Speedlamp specific details,
- 6500K is the LED bulb’s colour temperature – that’s bright white
- Direct 120-277V power source (no external driver required)
- The LEDs are available in both single and double-sided strips
- The strips are available in all popular T12 lengths (for easy retrofitting)
- 50,000+ hour lifetime rating, L70
- Rotatable R17d sealed end caps
- Operating temperature: -30C to +60C
- IP 65 rated
Memorializing Izenberg Goldberg Monuments
Readers familiar with the Bathurst and Woburn intersection of Toronto may remember the business that once occupied this location, 3173 Bathurst was formerly the site Izenberg Goldberg Monuments, a granite tombstones and monuments maker.
The firm was famous for how they’d developed proprietary techniques for creating beautiful and lifelike custom etchings on black granite memorials. You can still see their work today and it will be around for centuries to come in graveyards and cenotaphs across Canada.
Here is our digital monument to a fellow sign-maker.