Effective School Signage Strategies

School signage can provide visual directions, communicate clear messages, and enable your school to have a cohesive brand that speaks volumes to parents, teachers, and students alike. It can create a welcoming environment and promote your school's vision, values, and culture becoming essential for visitors who are unfamiliar with your campus. 

Yet implementing an effective school signage strategy can be difficult. Poor signage could send the wrong message about your ethos and standards potentially lowering enrollments.

How do you implement effective school signage? In this article, we discuss some of the effective strategies to be considered when implementing signage at your school. Strategies that will adhere to the way you can communicate your messages in a valuable way. 

Positioning Your School Signage

One of the most effective strategies to consider is looking at how your school signage is positioned, especially your primary external signage. It’s crucial to position signage in a noticeable area and where it’s easily seen. We recommend positioning any roadside signage perpendicular to the road, as this creates more viewing time for motorists and reduces any safety risk.

Within your school, directional or wayfinding signage that is clear and positioned effectively can be visually practical. When assessing the effectiveness of your wayfinding signage, assess whether a first-time visitor would know to follow certain routes, or might be confused by an unexpected diversion. Good directional wayfinding signage provides clear messages with the use of maps and symbols, to display directions that can be conveyed easily. 

Considering where you position your school signs, especially with the height of the sign and which area it will be positioned in, will ensure visitors can view it easily. Resulting in your school signs standing out and creating a memorable first impression.

What to Include on School Signage, Is Less More?

We recommend leaving finer details, such as phone numbers and emails, off our larger identity signs with a key focus on getting the core brand and message across. It’s essential to consider what information might need to be written down, and with research, most visitors don’t write down this information. It can be a more effective approach to have less information on school signage making the school name and brand more effective. 

An overcluttered design is visually overwhelming, but by simplifying your message and including only what is necessary, your audience will understand and absorb the information being communicated much more easily. This should also be considered when designing signage so that it can effectively display all pertinent information on one single sign, rather than on multiple. 

By including small important details that are beneficial and practical, like certain building levels, drop-off or pick-up areas, offices, halls, or libraries. You can effectively provide enough information without it being overwhelming.

Designing School Signs

The design of school signage is crucial and can enhance the campus' branding, creating a cohesive look while still being practical. Electra LED signs, gate signs, directional signs, and building signs are types of signage that can be installed across a school campus. All serve a purpose in relaying information and communicating messages, but also provide an opportunity to represent your school’s brand identity.

During the design process at Corporate Sign Industries, we use a certain amount of negative space around the information used, making it easier to read and appear more attractive. This is the beginning of maintaining a consistent school sign design that aligns with your existing brand identity, establishing a uniform and professional appearance.

LED Signage

Our Electra LED signs are a simple, high-quality way to display your messages. With the ability to update messages in real time, you can revolutionise communication with your community.

LED signage has several key benefits. It’s bright, enabling it to attract the eye even in inclement weather conditions, and in comparison to other power signage solutions, it has a low running cost thanks to the energy-efficient LEDs. When you want to change the core messaging on your main signage (to celebrate a win or announce enrollment dates for example) LED school signage is the preferred asset for such requirements.

Gate Signage

Gate signs are essential for helping to direct people to your site. Visitors, tradespeople, and especially emergency services can find their way more easily if they know which gate to enter through.

As one of the main communication methods for people entering the premises, this serves not only as an assurance that traffic is in the right place but can convey key directional information to newcomers.

Directional Signage

Effective directional signs throughout the campus provide clear messaging on the location of key destinations and the optimal route to find them. Including arrows, symbols, and text on your directional signage can be a clear and easy way to direct those seeing them, but should be legible and easy to understand. 

From a functional perspective, directional signage is essential for an efficient flow of traffic throughout the site. This can reduce the burden on internal resources, like reception staff, who may be tasked with directing visitors, when effective signage could be achieving the same outcome.

How to Identify if Your Signage Strategy is Ineffective

• New visitors require directions from reception, students, or teachers.
• Traffic congestion occurring at peak times.
• Reduced school enrollments.
• Inconsistent school branding or lack of school pride.

Is a Signage Audit your Next Step?

Planning the signage around your campus can be daunting, and it can be difficult to know where to begin. Looking at your signage every day, and developing your own internal wayfinding capabilities, you might not be able to critically assess your school signage with fresh eyes.

To overcome these challenges we’ve developed a signage audit that’s unique to schools. Built over 30 years, we have been designing and creating innovative sign solutions for Australian primary schools, high schools, colleges, and more. Some of these include Christian Brothers’ High School, Sunshine College, and Beverley Hills Primary School. You can see some of the completed signage and hear what it was like to partner with us. 

If you’re considering whether you have the right signage for your school then there’s an easy next step. You might think that there’s too much information on your existing signage, or that your design isn’t reflecting your brand, and you might be right. To be certain, book a Visual Strategy Workshop so our experienced professionals can conduct an independent signage audit, to uncover the opportunities your school could unlock with an effective signage strategy.