In the competitive world of commerce, every tool at our disposal can make a difference in attracting customers and boosting our brand visibility. One crucial aspect of marketing that often goes unnoticed is signage. Gone are the days of static, traditional signs. Today there are many options, with LED message centers and dynamic digital displays leading the pack. In this article, we’ll explore the differences between these two cutting-edge signage solutions and help you make an informed decision for your business.

LED Messages Centers versus Dynamic Digital Displays

LED Message Centers: LED message centers are an evolution of traditional signs with an added touch of technology. These signs use light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to display text, images, and animations. One significant advantage of LED message centers is their eye-catching nature, drawing attention even from a distance. They allow businesses to display dynamic content that can be easily updated and customized to promote sales, specials, events, or convey essential messages. Additionally, their energy-efficient design means lower operating costs and a longer lifespan compared to traditional bulbs.

Dynamic Digital Displays: Dynamic digital displays, on the other hand, take signage to a whole new level. These sophisticated screens are essentially large-scale digital monitors that can showcase high-definition videos, interactive content, live updates, and real-time social media feeds. Dynamic digital displays offer unparalleled versatility, enabling businesses to captivate audiences with engaging content that leaves a lasting impression. They are ideal for large storefronts, shopping centers, and entertainment venues looking to create immersive experiences for their customers.

Choosing the Right Signage for Your Business

When considering LED message centers or dynamic digital displays for your business, there are several key factors to keep in mind:

1. Budget: LED message centers tend to be more budget-friendly than dynamic digital displays, making them an attractive option for smaller businesses or those with limited resources.
2. Location: Consider the size and location of your business. LED message centers are excellent choices for smaller storefronts or roadside advertising, while dynamic digital displays are better suited for large, high-traffic areas.
3. Content Needs: Think about the type of content you want to display. If you need real-time updates and interactive content, dynamic digital displays are the way to go. However, if static images and text are sufficient for your business needs, LED message centers may be the more practical choice.
4. Long-term Goals: Consider your long-term marketing strategy. Dynamic digital displays offer greater flexibility and adaptability for future campaigns and rebranding efforts.

In conclusion, both LED message centers and dynamic digital displays bring a modern touch to your business’s signage, but each caters to different needs. LED message centers are cost-effective and suitable for businesses with straightforward content requirements, while dynamic digital displays offer an immersive experience and are ideal for businesses looking to make a bold statement. Before making a decision, carefully evaluate your budget, location, content needs, and long-term goals.

At Precision Signs and Imaging in Burnsville, MN we understand the importance of choosing the right signage for your business. Our team of experts is here to guide you through the process, ensuring your investment delivers maximum impact and returns. Contact us today to explore the best signage solution for your unique business needs.

Remember, a well-chosen sign is more than just an advertisement – it’s a powerful tool to communicate your brand’s personality and values to the world.

We’re changing the way we light out world. From simple energy-saving upgrades in flashlights to homes fixtures, to larger ticket items, including stage and architectural lighting, as well as the lights we see as we drive down the roadway. This, of course, includes commercial signage.

The next time you have a bulb burn out, or need to make a change to your commercial signage, may be the perfect time to covert your signage to LED.

An array of LED modules replace the florescent bulbs in the City of Lakeville’s illuminated sign.

The maintenance on your sign decreases dramatically once converted to LED lights. LED won’t flicker, burn out significantly less often, and produce consistent light throughout their life cycle, which can exceed 50,000 hours.

The obvious savings with LED conversions is the energy savings, but for a business, the largest savings can come from the maintenance of the sign. While the cost of a florescent bulb may be minimal, the cost to have them replaced can add up, especially when those bulbs are located inside pylon signs high off the ground. Difficult to access and hard to reach, the bill for replacing a bulb, which can happen more than once a year, adds up quickly.

Reliable power supplies replace troublesome florescent ballasts in LED installations.

LEDs also replace the need for ballasts – a requirement for all florescent lighting as well as other commercial and industrial bulbs, such as mercury vapor lighting. The contain zero mercury (safer for the environment) and are shatterproof. Since they emit almost no heat, there’s no need for glass, which is also more likely to break during transit and installation.

As the prices for LEDs come down, so do the options. LED conversions come now in as many forms as incandescent bulbs – from modules to fit inside channel letters and other custom sizes, to simpler conversion bulbs that, with proper rewiring, fit into existing florescent fixtures.

Precision Signs & Imaging is doing more and more LED conversions, and, as previously mentioned, most businesses and business park owners choose to upgrade their sign when other changes are needed. This July we’ve performed LED conversions to a large sign at the Lakeville Central Maintenance Facility during a sign refacing, as well as a similar project at Lakeville Liquors at County Road 42 and Interstate 35.

We look forward to consulting you on your LED conversion as well. Give us a call at 952-595-5678 to find out more.

We get lots of calls for all kinds of vehicle wraps. Color changes, custom graphics, business promotion – these are all great reasons to consider a vehicle wrap using vinyl product. Vinyl offers the option to do anything you can imagine, and produce holographic and metal effects that can be costly or difficult to produce with standard paint jobs.

We also get call for people wanting to “restore” a vehicle with a vinyl wrap. We’re just going to put it out there – vinyl isn’t duct tape.

transport, corrosion and care concept – close up of rusty car door surface

If you’re looking to fix a failing paint job with a vinyl wrap, it’s just not going to work. If the paint’s not sticking, the vinyl on that paint isn’t going to stick either. Vinyl’s not going to stick to rust either. It’s going to install poorly perform poorly and look unprofessional.

Vinyl wraps remain an great option for doing something truly unique. From doing things paint simply can’t do, from custom professional graphics to metallic and reflective materials that are simply out of this world.

Office building complexes often have Uniform Sign Design or (USD) to ensure that no one tenet oversteps their bounds with signs that don’t meet the wishes of the building owner.  A USD instructs the business owner if they can have illuminated or non-illuminated letters, if it is acceptable to have your letters on a raceway or if they must be directly connected to the building, or if a sign can contain graphics or just text.

As time passes and technology changes the USD may just be the thing that needs to change with the sign of the times. This is the case with the Minnesota Valley Building located at 10800 Normadale Blvd., in Bloomington, Minnesota. The old USD written in the 1970s called for only dimensional letters, mounted individually on standoffs with a height not to exceed 12 inches. The only choice of color was a dark gold which caused the letters to blend into the dark brown awning from any viewable distance.

Recently a new tenet moved into the complex and made note to the building owner that he didn’t want to waste money on a sign since the current USD only allowed letters not visible from the street.  This defeats the purpose of a sign, which is to inform and direct potential clients to your location.

We held meetings with the building owner and the Bloomington City Permitting Office. With the client’s needs taken into consideration, the USD was changed to allow dimensional letters in a variety of colors to be mounted to three-millimeter white bi-bond panels to allow for greater contrast and visibility.

Sometimes a facelift is just what is needed to help your business succeed. We’re willing to help you change the rules to make that happen. A sign you can’t see is just as good as no sign, and after all, a business with no sign, is a sign of no business.

Vehicle lettering, decals and wraps, either partial or complete, are a big part of the sign inventory at Precision Signs & Imaging. Vehicle advertising puts your company’s image and information directly on the street. That annoying stop light just turned into an opportunity to tell the vehicles around you what you do, and you don’t even have to turn down your music.

“The best thing about a vehicle wrap is that it’s free advertising wherever you go,” said Rocco, art director for Precision Signs & Imaging.

While the mobile advertising is free, the cost on an install breaks down into a few areas. The first is design. When a customer contacts us about a vehicle wrap, their idea of what that means can vary greatly, from a few decals spread around the body, to covering much of the body. We work with customers to determine the best solution for their case.

In the design process, we work with templates for specified vehicles, then layout and develop plans for installation. We follow up with printing the graphic on a variety of stocks, from good to best quality material, including a range of vinyl products from 3M and Avery.

The final step is installation, usually performed by a two-person team. This can take several hours to a full day, depending on the size and complexity of the vehicle.

Precision Signs & Imaging completed two vehicle wrap installations last week, covering the signs of our work can with full length decals to match the already covered hood. The install was completed May 9 in our shop.

On Thursday and Friday, we completed the side running vinyl graphics for Minnesota Asphalt Maintenance on a new Chevy Silverado 3500 work truck, complete with custom graphics, company phone number and two-inch DOT numbers.

I am often amazed when I speak to people about signage at how many people think of a sign as a post in the ground with a sign face nailed to it.  Sure, that’s a sign but there is so much more to signage than this traditional image that pops into our heads.  The world of signage is expansive and incredibly diverse so I wanted to take a moment to talk about some of the outstanding products we make that one doesn’t think of as being ‘signs’.

This is a sign!

Flag banners:  These come in a variety of shapes and sizes and there are bases available for sitting on hard surfaces, sticking into the grass or gravel, or even to hold down under a car tire.  Their unique shapes and use of wind to create movement make them a popular choice for drawing the attention of all kinds of traffic from a distance.  The most popular shape for these is the teardrop-shaped banner, however they can be made round, square, triangular, or whatever you wish.

Monument signs:  Large buildings and buildings with many tenants often like to employ monument signs to tell the public where they are and they come in just about every shape, size and style you can think of.  Some are made of masonry or wood, but recent years have seen the rise of foamcraft monuments which simulate these materials with incredible realism.  These foam-formed monuments are painted to look just like the real thing but do not require the structural foundation of real masonry because they are much lighter.  They also are made to withstand powerful winds and all types of weather, typically at a fraction of the cost of real masonry.

Vehicle wraps are one of the most cost-efficient ways to advertise and, when done right, have a head-turning effect that can’t be matched.

Vehicle graphics:  A sign on a vehicle?  Sure thing!  Vehicle wraps offer the biggest bang-for-the-buck of any type of signage because of their unique eye-catching nature.  A full car wrap or truck wrap is hard to ignore driving down the road or parked in front of a business, but there are options for smaller budgets that work well too.  These could include truck door and tailgate lettering, partial wraps, spot location graphics, door magnets or perforated window graphics.

Electronic message centers (EMC):  Some of the most dynamic and versatile signs in the world are today’s full-color LED message centers.  They can be made in a variety of sizes and shapes and can feature full color text or graphics which can be programmed to change like a slideshow.  Some even feature animation and sound, so the possiblities are endless with these powerful advertising tools.  They can be mounted to a building, integrated into a monument sign or lighted sign cabinet, installed into a scoreboard, made into a roadside billboard or even just stand alone.

Signicades:  The traditional A-frame sign has been used by shop owners for just about as long as signs have existed, but today’s signicades take the concept to the next level.  These are made of a durable plastic which can have graphics changed in and out at will and reused over and over again.  They come in all sizes from tabletop to gigantic and can be filled with water or sand to keep them from blowing over.

Wood, cement, brick, and may types of painted surfaces can feature massive wall murals like this.

Wall graphics:  Some people look at a wall and just see a wall.  I look at a wall and see a blank canvas!  Put spaces like walls, windows and even floors to work for you promoting whatever message you wish.  Today’s materials are amazing and can adhere to a wide variety of surfaces- even textured surfaces like brick!  These murals can stretch down a hallway or mark/promote products on display in a P.O.P. setting.  Direct traffic by putting floor graphics down which tell folks where to go, or simply use it as a way to put beautiful full-color imagery on a wall as part of your interior design plan.

It doesn’t stop there- I could keep redefining the word ‘sign’ all day long!  We could talk about giant trade show walls that collapse into a tiny travel case, 3D routed signs that jump out at the viewer, signs with programmed lighting displays and more- but the best way to learn about what sign is right for you is to contact the professionals at Precision Signs & Imaging.  We have all the latest technology as well as the design ability and vision to help you make the most of it.

www.precisionsandi.com / 952-595-5678 / graphics@precisionsandi.com