Old Sign
The Sandy Actors Theatre is a regional community live performance theater located in Sandy, Oregon—an outer suburb of Portland. Not having a location on either of the two main traffic thoroughfares, much less any street presence whatsoever, their primary source of exposure is their street sign. The sign “piggy-backs” underneath a hardware store sign that advertises changing messages via a slide letter on rail system.
The theater, with limited funds, historically had hand painted signs to promote their five yearly productions and were considering switching to a similar slide letter/rail sign. This location can be seen by approximately 25,000 vehicles daily and so functions as the theater’s primary source of exposure for their non-profit. I was able to convince them to use a larger sign with five smaller sign inserts used annually to accommodate their changing titles. All other information was constant, particularly their hearing and handicap symbols, which they wanted to be large and easily noticed by the elderly.
The new sign is more visible from the road now, with their name prominently displayed, their performance information using a clean san-serif on a white background that can be varied with a wide letter or condensed type to flexibly handle title and author name lengths.
The sign now assists legibility, upgrades their visibility and image in the community and still works within their budget. Since the sign was redesigned, each of their performances has seen more audiences!