Branding & design

Signage and displays: at night, at a distance, with permission

A sign is judged at the distance and speed of whoever passes. And nothing goes up without the commune’s agreement, which is asked for before ordering.

Published on 23 June 2026 — Algeria Agency

The article on the branding pillar puts it in a sentence: the sign is the only support that has to work at night and from a distance. This page takes that sentence and draws out everything it implies, including the parts that have nothing to do with drawing.

Three things decide signage and none of them is graphic. The distance and speed of whoever passes, which set the size of what is written. The lighting, which decides whether the sign still exists after five in the afternoon in winter. And the authorisation, which decides whether it may be put up at all.

The fourth is the climate, and it is the only part of this pillar where sound work fails on its own: sun fades, wind tears, dust clogs, and sea air eats the fixings within two winters.

This article also covers point-of-sale material, which obeys a different and widely ignored rule: the space is not yours. A display occupies an area the retailer could sell, and they throw it out the day it stops paying for itself.

The only support that has to work at night

Every other support in this pillar is looked at in good conditions: a card in the hand, packaging under shop lighting, a screen held at thirty centimetres. The sign is the only one that has to hold in bad conditions, at any hour.

It is seen from a distance, at an angle, in motion, with a tree in front of it, in the rain, and half the year after dark. A design approved on a screen in mid-afternoon tests none of those conditions.

That changes the nature of the work. You do not draw a sign, you size a reading: how many words, at what size, at what contrast, lit how. Aesthetics arrive after those four decisions and do not alter them.

It also changes what can go on it. A sign carries one or two elements: the name, and possibly the trade in one word. Opening hours, services, the phone number and brand logos belong to the window, which is read at three metres and standing still.

The final check happens neither on screen nor on paper: it happens on site, at the hour your customers pass, and a second time after dark. Two ten-minute visits, and they replace every discussion.

At what distance, and at what speed

The first question is not the size of the sign but the position of whoever reads it. A pedestrian on the same pavement, a pedestrian across the road, a driver at thirty and a driver at sixty are not reading the same object.

Speed matters as much as distance because it fixes the time available. A pedestrian has several seconds and can read two words. A driver has a fraction of a second and reads one word, or a shape they recognise.

So a reader has to be chosen and the others accepted as lost. A sign sized for the driver is oversized and expensive for the pedestrian; one sized for the pedestrian is invisible from the road. Both exist and they go in two different places.

For many Algerian businesses the reader who matters is neither: it is the person already looking for the address, phone in hand, who needs to confirm they have arrived. That reader wants the exact name, readable at fifteen metres, and nothing else.

The method that settles it is physical: go to the exact point your customers arrive from, measure the distance, and look at what you can make out on the neighbouring signs. In five minutes you get a usable reference, taken from your own street rather than from a manual.

Letter-height charts

Charts exist giving the letter height needed for a given reading distance, and they circulate widely. We will publish none of them, for a reason that has to do with what they are rather than where they come from.

Those charts come from sign manufacturers, in other markets, and they do not measure the same thing. Some give the threshold at which a word becomes decipherable if you are looking for it; others give the size at which it catches the attention of somebody who is not. The gap between the two is a factor of around four.

Publishing one of them as though it were the rule would therefore produce either an unreadable sign or one four times too expensive — and the reader would have no way of knowing which of the two they had just ordered.

The physical test settles it in ten minutes and costs nothing. Print the name at three different heights on three sheets, hold them at the intended position, and walk back to where your customers actually are. The right size is the one you read without effort.

Repeat the same test in the evening, with the lighting actually available. A height that works by day can be insufficient at night, because contrast drops and the eye loses acuity — which is the next section.

Night is half the trading day

In winter, daylight goes before the afternoon is over. A business open until seven or eight therefore spends a significant part of its selling day in darkness, with a sign that no longer exists if it is not lit.

Three solutions exist and they do not cost the same. The externally lit sign, with aimed floodlights: the cheapest, the easiest to repair, and the one that also lights the pavement. The back-lit sign, where light comes from behind the letters: the most legible and the most expensive.

The third is illuminated lettering, where each letter is a lit box. It is the most elegant solution and the most fragile: when one letter goes out, the sign becomes a spelling mistake visible at a hundred metres, and section 10 returns to it.

The choice rests on three criteria people forget: consumption, paid every month; access for maintenance, which decides whether a replacement costs a ladder or a platform; and power cuts, which are frequent and leave the sign dark at exactly the moment it would serve most.

One regulatory point to check before choosing: the lighting of a sign is sometimes governed by the commune, in its intensity as well as its hours. That belongs to the next section and is asked before ordering, not after installation.

The authorisation comes from the commune

This is the part businesses discover after paying, and it makes everything above pointless if it is not handled first: putting up a sign requires a municipal authorisation, and the rules vary from one commune to another.

What is governed generally covers dimensions, projection over public space, height above the pavement, lighting, and sometimes the language and character of the inscriptions. Some communes additionally have particular requirements on classified thoroughfares or historic centres.

A fiscal dimension is added: communes levy local taxes on advertising and signage, assessed on surface area. A larger sign is therefore not only more expensive to make, it can cost every year.

The correct step fits in one sentence and happens before any quotation: go to the relevant department of your commune with a dimensioned sketch and ask what is permitted at that address. The answer is local, it is free, and it often changes the project.

We do not give legal advice and this page is not any. For premises held in co-ownership or on a lease, two further agreements are needed and often forgotten: the owner’s and the co-ownership’s, both in writing and before ordering.

What a sign goes through

It is the only support in this pillar that ages outdoors, and it ages fast. The four assaults are known and each is dealt with when the materials are chosen, not afterwards.

Sun fades, and it fades unevenly: reds and magentas go first, as on packaging displayed in a window. A south-facing sign with a red ground can turn pink within two summers, giving a business that looks abandoned.

Wind tears things off. That is not a figure of speech: projecting panels, banners and pavement boards are sized for wind loading, and a fixing calculated for a wall does not suit a canopy. It is a safety subject before it is a durability one.

Dust clogs, especially in dry regions and on busy roads. A back-lit sign whose diffuser is covered in dust loses a significant share of its brightness, and nobody thinks to clean it because it is high up.

And sea air corrodes. On the coast, ordinary steel fixings rust within two winters and stain the façade. The correction is a choice of hardware, it costs little to buy, and it is nearly always made the wrong way round because nobody asked the question.

The window: three metres and thirty centimetres

A shop window obeys the same logic of distance as packaging, with two distances instead of one: three metres from the pavement, and thirty centimetres for somebody who has stopped.

At three metres a window says three things: what is sold, whether it is open, and whether it is expensive. The third is read even when nothing is displayed, from the presentation itself, which is reason enough to show prices rather than let people guess.

At thirty centimetres it carries the detail: prices, ranges, terms, opening hours, the number. That is also where changing information goes, on a removable holder, for the reason set out in the print design article.

A frequent and expensive error: covering the window. Full vinyl across the whole surface turns a business into a closed box, removes the view inside — which is the best argument a well-kept shop has — and darkens the premises.

The rule we apply is to keep at least half the surface transparent at eye level and to use the upper and lower bands. That leaves the real activity visible, which reassures more than any printed photograph.

The vehicle: four seconds

A liveried vehicle is a mobile sign, and it is the worst designed of all because it is treated as a surface to fill. The reader sees it for a few seconds, usually in motion, and from a changing angle.

What survives those conditions is very short: one word and a number. The word is the trade rather than the name, if the name is not known — "plumbing" is read and remembered, an unknown brand is not.

The phone number is the only element that can be hoped to get written down, and it has to be large enough to read from the car alongside, in numerals, with no unusual grouping. A number written small on a door has never served anybody.

The sides and the back do not have the same use. The back is read by somebody stopped behind you at a light: it is the only place where there is time, so that is where the number should be largest. The sides are read in passing and are entitled only to the word.

Finally, a liveried vehicle is a commitment about driving. It carries your name through traffic every day, and a disputed manoeuvre in front of two hundred people is a reputation problem, handled by the corresponding article. It is worth saying to the team before the vinyl goes on.

Point-of-sale material: the space is not yours

Point-of-sale material obeys a rule brands consistently forget: the surface it occupies belongs to a retailer, it is counted, and it competes with products that earn.

The consequence is blunt and can be checked in any shop: most displays delivered end up in the stockroom or the bin within a month. Not through ill will, but because they take up more room than what they sell justifies.

What survives has three properties. It is small, or it replaces something that was already there. It serves the retailer as much as you — a display that tidies, that keeps dust off, or that saves relabelling. And it needs no assembly.

What never survives: floor units in shops under fifty square metres, posters with no means of fixing, anything requiring a power socket, and anything that arrives without somebody having asked the retailer whether they wanted it.

The method that saves most is the simplest: before having a thousand displays produced, take three into three shops and go back a fortnight later. If they are still in place, produce. If they are behind the counter, you have just saved an entire order.

The displayed price

Displaying prices is a regulatory obligation in retail, and it is also, independently of that, the signage element producing the most effect for the least money.

The effect is the one described elsewhere on this site for the pricing page and for a photograph’s caption: a displayed price sorts visitors before the exchange. In a physical shop it avoids the conversation where somebody asks, hears, and leaves — a conversation that occupies a salesperson and leads nowhere.

The practical constraint is that prices change, which makes printed display expensive and often wrong. The solution is the same as for print generally: a fixed holder and a replaceable part — a slate, a label holder, a slide-in strip.

What does not work: handwritten labels stuck over old ones, which signal that nothing is kept current, and the complete absence of prices on displayed items, which produces immediate mistrust and a share of departures without a word.

One point often neglected: the legibility of the price from the customer’s actual position, that is, standing, at a metre, with a reflection on the glass. A price printed small and laid flat under glass is unreadable for many people, which cancels the whole effect.

One dead letter is worse than no sign

What is on the façade is seen every day by everybody, including people who are not yet your customers, and it is the only support in this pillar whose deterioration is public and permanent.

A dead letter turns your name into something else, and the something else is often comic. A flickering tube signals a neglected business. Vinyl peeling across a third of the window says nobody is looking after it, and the passer-by applies that to the service.

Maintenance is therefore a line in the signage budget rather than an accident. It is planned at purchase: what a module replacement costs, whether a platform is needed, whether the installer attends, and within what time. Those four answers are asked before ordering.

The check that suffices is visual and weekly, done by whoever opens: they step back ten metres, look at the lit façade, and report what is missing. It takes a minute and it is the only maintenance we have seen hold over time.

One note on temporary signage: a banner reading "opening soon" that has been up for eight months, or a faded site sheet, says exactly what should not be said. Temporary signage has an end date, and that date is set on the day it goes up.

What we do, and what we will refuse to do

What we will refuse: drawing a sign before the question of municipal authorisation has been asked. It is a refusal that delays the project by a few days and has already prevented, at clients of ours, signs that were manufactured and could not be installed.

We will refuse to have point-of-sale material produced unless at least three retailers have accepted a sample and kept it a fortnight. Without that test, an order for a thousand displays is a bet on a surface that is not yours.

We will refuse to choose a letter height from a chart found online. Section 2’s physical test costs three printed sheets and ten minutes, and it gives an answer valid at your address rather than on average.

What we do: the readers’ real positions surveyed on site, by day and after dark; the dimensioned sketch taken to the commune before any quotation; materials and hardware chosen for the exposure and the proximity of the coast; the window kept half transparent; and the price shown on a replaceable holder.

And what you can do tonight without us: walk past your premises at the hour your customers do, once in daylight and once after dark, and note what you can read from the opposite pavement. Two ten-minute round trips, and you will know whether your sign exists.

Frequently asked questions

What letter height do we need?

We publish no chart: the ones in circulation come from other markets and measure different things, with a gap of around a factor of four. Print the name at three heights, hold the sheets at the intended position, and walk back to where your customers actually stand.

Is authorisation needed to put up a sign?

Yes, and it is municipal: dimensions, projection, height, lighting and sometimes the inscriptions themselves. Go to the relevant department with a dimensioned sketch before any quotation. On a lease or in co-ownership, add the written agreement of the owner and the co-ownership.

Should the sign be lit?

In winter a significant part of your selling day happens after dark, and an unlit sign no longer exists. Choose on three forgotten criteria: monthly consumption, access for maintenance, and what happens during a power cut.

Can the whole window be covered in vinyl?

It turns the business into a closed box, removes the view inside — the best argument a well-kept shop has — and darkens the premises. Keep at least half the surface transparent at eye level and use the upper and lower bands.

What goes on a vehicle?

One word and a number. The word is the trade rather than the name if the name is not known. The number goes largest on the back, the only place read by somebody stopped behind you at a light.

Why do our displays disappear?

Because they occupy a surface belonging to the retailer that competes with products that earn. Test three in three shops and go back a fortnight later before having a thousand produced.

Where we come in

Your two walks past the front tell you what can be read. They tell you nothing about what the commune will allow above your door.

We go to the counter before discussing material, size or budget.
We record the real distance and speed of people passing, at the two hours that matter.
We hand you a dimensioned sketch you can lodge yourself.

Listed frontage, shared freehold or a precarious lease: start with the managing agent and planning, and pay for no drawing until that is settled.

Start with the free audit See the POS Displays & Signage page

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