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Mall Makeovers

The many faces of mall signage and environmental graphics

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As U.S. demographics shift, the typical consumer’s buying pattern has reflected these changes. In most metropolitan areas, most retailers (particularly smaller, independent or regional outfits) have emigrated from downtown storefronts to more sprawling shopping centers, prevalent among residential neighborhoods.

Because this trend has continued for decades, the shopping mall has continued to evolve. Enclosed shopping malls have increasingly become destinations – such child-friendly amenities as merry-go-rounds and play areas have become ubiquitous, and adults are drawn by an increasingly diverse and upscale mixture of stores and restaurants.

As big-box retailers such as Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Target enjoy mushrooming growth, they’ve earned stature as anchors that allure smaller enterprises to set up shop at open-air shopping centers. Moreover, the very concept of a shopping center continues to transform. In recent years, developers have created “lifestyle centers,” open-air facilities that complement their stores with architecture, landscaping and street furniture that provide a neighborhood-like feel.

As mall owners and managers seek to give their properties a more defined sense of place, they’ve emphasized making their sites more attractive than their competitors – and, this trickles down to each shop owner wanting “fair advantage.” These changes have impacted the firms and companies that design, build and install the signage that give malls and their tenants a graphic identity.

Read on to learn how those charged with developing retail-center signage approached solu¬tions that keep millions of mall customers coming back.

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Mall insights

According to statistics furnished by the New York City-based International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC), 48,695 U.S. shopping centers were open for business in 2005, an increase of roughly 5% versus three years prior. Predictably, smaller centers predominate: More than 30,000 of those properties spanned less than 100,000 sq. ft., whereas only 437 (less than 1% of the total) measured greater than 1 million sq. ft. Collectively, these centers controlled 6.06 billion sq. ft. of leasable retail area, generated $2.12 trillion in sales and employed 12.7 million people (slightly less than 10% of the nation’s workforce).

Malachy Kavanagh, the ICSC’s director of communications, under¬scored malls’ ideal marketing platforms.

“As TV and other media became fractured with an overabundance of competing channels, advertising messages become increasingly diluted,” he said. “When potential customers venture to shopping centers, they’re more inclined to spend. An average mall shopper lives in a household with more than $70,000 of annual income, so it’s usually an affluent demographic.”

However, Kavanagh cautioned that advertising messages must be carefully delivered. Most customers come to malls and shopping centers as a diversion from their daily lives, and signage and graphics should direct would-be customers to specific stores and merchandise, rather than inundate them with excessive untargeted marketing, he said.

Also, Kavanagh noted mall advertising’s increasingly interconnected nature transcends traditional store signage and POP. “I look at mall marketing as a three-pronged approach – there’s in-store signage and graphic branding; there are traditional catalogs, and now the Internet, which allows portable advertising messages that can be delivered instantly to even handheld devices. This creates more knowledgeable, purposeful customers and simplifies marketing.”

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Signs and Services Co.

Signs and Services Co. (Stanton, CA) was founded in 1979 as a shop that fabricated storefront, MDO signage. Six years later, the company delved into electric signage, which has since yielded countless shopping-center opportunities. Matt DeRuyter, now the company’s president, said the 40-employee shop fabricates approxi¬mately 60% of its signs for clients outside of metro Los Angeles, for which it subcontracts installation.

Recently, DeRuyter said civic governments and review boards have become more attuned to outdoor environmental graphics’ potential impact – whether this means a more restrictive or permissive sign code depends on the governing body’s attitude, but signage has incurred greater interest. In the West, California has long been notorious for strict codes, but other Western states, including Arizona and New Mexico (though these states are perceived as libertarian-leaning), have chimed with similar opinions. For such proper¬ties, restrictions are commonly expressed in terms of permissible signs per sq. ft. or acre, or their proximity to one another.

“But, some city involvement is positive,” he said. “Certain city plan¬ners want to create more distinctive shopping-center signage. They understand the days of conventional pylon signs, lightboxes and monu¬ment signs being enough to attract shoppers are passing by.”

For smaller malls, the company assumes design/build authority and establishes tenants’ guidelines that create consistent scale. To optimize the effectiveness of monument and vertical-pylon signs, DeRuyter eval¬uates traffic patterns and the property’s ingress and egress points to determine ideal scale and placement. For tenant signage, DeRuyter reserves the right to approve graphics that ensure consistent flow with their environment.

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For larger properties, ownership conglomerates, such as Simon Properties or the Mills Corp., will either develop concepts inhouse or contract with a large environ¬mental-graphic design (EGD) firm such as Wayne Hunt Design (Pasadena, CA) or Boulder, CO-based Communication Arts. Depending on the operational structure, the developer, general contractor or EGD will determine the sign fabricator. Sometimes, he must don his teaching cap.

“The architect or [EGD] firm will sometimes specify a length of aluminum or a diameter of neon tubing that’s not commonly sold, or specify an element that would require expensive custom manufac¬turing or that simply can’t be done,” DeRuyter said. “From time to time, a lesson in manufacturing methods or appropriate material – [Alcan Composities USA Inc.] Alucobond® architectural-cladding suits many of these projects — is required to push for materials more conducive to effective fabrication.”

A 130-ft.-tall pylon sign for the Glendora (CA) Marketplace is one of his favorite Signs and Services shop¬ping-center projects. The property was unusual because Home Depot owned the Marketplace property and rights to on-premise signage near the neighboring freeway, but other tenants ordered the signage. Thus, an easement and “Big Orange” approval were required to complete the work.

The location also presented a logistical challenge. The selected site comprised fill dirt, which made the ground more tenuous. To bolster the structure, Signs and Services specified 20-ft.-deep, concrete footings, which it contracted to a concrete company.

The company built a fluorescent-lit lightbox encased within impact-modified acrylic. To make the market stand out amidst oncoming traffic, fabricators installed exposed, cold-cathode tubing that DeRuyter said “can be seen from 500 ft. away.”

Southwest Sign Co.

Jack Fovell opened his own signshop, Southwest Sign (Corona, CA), roughly 15 years ago. He’d worked for years as a sign salesman, and decided to specialize in mall-sign fabrication. Southwest Sign has grown to a 20-person shop that fabricates electric and architectural signage, as well as 3-D themed graphics and metalwork.

In pursuit of his credo, “If you can draw it, we can build it,” Fovell is often brought into mall-signage projects because of their frequently unconventional, custom characteristics.

“We aren’t a shop that produces 100 sets of identical channel letters for a store rollout,” he said. “We have some clients, such as Hot Dog on a Stick, that have locations at several upscale malls, yet every sign requires a custom solution.”

The company garners most of its shopping-center contracts through relationships with prominent West Coast developers, such as Westfield, Macerich and the Irvine Co.

Fovell says most mall signage evolves from an architect’s plan. However, an architect’s treatment of signage usually entails little more than a superficial sketch, so its primary purpose is to convey the architectural proportion and concept.

Fovell offers consultation services gratis to architects and general contractors to help them develop practical, environmental-graphic programs – which, in many cases, nets the job for Southwest Sign. It’s also essential to cultivate good relationships with mall managers, who wield considerable influence in authorizing final design and fabrication decisions.

Fovell evaluates the sign’s elevation and ambient lighting before meeting with the client. While clients’ interests in lighting or mate¬rials may vary, they’re often keenly interested in visibility and “are well aware of the competition for the consumer’s discretionary income, and they know what they like when they see it.”

Deadlines often characterize mall projects. Unlike strip-mall stores, which can unfurl a “Now Open” banner, an interior mall store is engulfed by a barricade and can’t open until the storefront and signage are finished. And, because malls usually remain open for 12 hours or more, sign installers are relegated to odd hours, such as midnight to 8 a.m.

However, because malls reside on private property and aren’t visible from the street, the regulations owners establish typically emphasize creativity and aesthetics, rather than municipal codes that rigidly dictate color, size, location, etc. Fovell noted mall architects increasingly face directives to concoct designs that mesh with architecturally compelling details, such as high ceilings and open atriums that create an airy ambience. However, this sometimes carries a downside of understated signage.

Mall signs also must acknowledge the scrutiny they incur. He said, “A strip-mall sign may be 50 ft. or more back from the road, so its details receive less scrutiny. However, a mall sign typically sits 3 to 4 ft. over shoppers’ heads, so a mall’s tenant coordinator, who writes the construction punch list, is a stickler for following specifications.”

Fovell doesn’t usually advocate specific sign components. Most commonly, he fabricates signs using aluminum, PVC and acrylic, but specialty materials, such as oxidized metals or faux finishes, are often used for custom elements. If a sign package includes closed or reverse-lit channel letters, he prefers using LEDs because their simpler wiring consumes less installation time and requires fewer warranty repairs.

Lorenc + Yoo Design

The son of a Polish leathersmith, Lorenc + Yoo Design (Roswell, GA) founder Jan Lorenc has crafted graphics for numerous clients with the firm’s partner, Chung Youl-Yoo, for upscale retail destinations such as metro Atlanta’s North Point Mall and Miami’s Dadeland Mall.

The company undertook an unusual property when Chicago-based General Growth Properties – the United States’ second-largest mall-management company – hired the firm to retool the image of the Burlington (VT) Town Center. Whereas most mall properties sit on campuses that span several acres with easy visibility, the Center – which features a two-story Macy’s anchor store and dozens of other, complementary tenants — only possesses a few feet of frontage on bustling Church St. in downtown Burlington. Due to surrounding city hall and other public buildings, improving its curb appeal required immediate attention.

“About 10 years ago, Town Center’s management ordered a masonry façade for the property,” Lorenc said. “But, it shared this frontage with a Starbucks and appeared dark and shrunken. The entry wasn’t monolithic enough for a dynamic shopping center.”

Lorenc + Yoo punched up its exterior graphics by accentuating the mall’s curlicue “B” logo on the painted façade. He incorporated it within a dome-formed, acrylic circle internally lit with high-output fluorescent lamps. Reverse channel letters impart a strong street presence. Also, existing sidewalk lightpoles feature upgraded light fixtures, and aluminum banners affixed to them announce key tenants such as Williams Sonoma and Coldwater Creek.

Inside, the Town Center previously appeared nondescript; a series of drab, cookie-cutter kiosks lined the corridors between shops. Lorenc + Yoo reduced the number of kiosks and created a series of digital graphics that dually directed shoppers to the stores and splashed tenant names in vivid colors and contrasting point sizes.

Lorenc said, “The way the corridor lays out, it was difficult to see where shops further within the Center were located. The mall is roughly a quarter-mile deep.” The new graphics package also bolstered the visibility of the Center’s parking garage and rein¬forced its made-over logo throughout.

Ornametal Specialties (Norcross, GA), a unit of Canada’s Pattison Sign Group, fabricated the signage. Peter Pankiewicz, Ornametal’s account executive, said Ornametal clad the lightpoles with a.125-in. aluminum skin, and fashioned the lightpole’s crowning “lanterns” using frosted acrylic (a “value engineering” decision instead of the originally specified glass, Pankiewicz said) and metal-halide architectural floodlights that were filtered through yellow lenses. Custom concrete footings and steel plates affix the banners onto the lightpoles.

For “Burlington,” the company developed primary-copy, 3-in.-deep, halo- and face-lit channel letters. The secondary row comprises ½-in.-deep, acrylic, push-through letters that spell out “Town Center,” decorated with red translucent vinyl.

Ornametal specified high-output, T12 lamps for exterior use and T5 lamps for indoor signage because the company deemed them effective in cold-weather installations. The company also fabricated the channel letters using PVC and acrylic-polyurethane paint; countersunk deck screws ensured a flush appearance. “Dixie”-based Ornametal had little trouble adapting its fabrication to Yankee winters.

“We consulted a local engineer, and he recommended the installa¬tion withstand 40 lbs. per sq. ft. of snow load,” Pankiewicz said. “Snow load isn’t much of a concern here in the South, but we were pleased to find our normal fabrication methods exceeded this standard.”

Inside, the company developed the tenant signage using Sintra® PVC material. Ornametal sized tenant signage to 4 x 12 ft. to accommodate weight-bearing parameters. Also, the company fabricated steel beams that support ceiling-hung banners that tout prominent Town Center tenants.

Ornametal subcontracted digital-graphics output to Atlanta-based Graphics Central. Tammy Taylor, a sales representative, said the company output approximately 2,000 sq. ft. of digital graphics using its |2324| 3360 solvent-ink printer and 3M Controltac™ vinyl with a luster laminate. Graphics Central developed the images from templates and 720-dpi images that Lorenc + Yoo provided. The panels’ installation, vertical rather than a horizontal position, will expose them to less fading and abrasion and extend their lifespan.

Lorenc + Yoo undertook a very different project when it developed environmental graphics for the Firewheel Town Center in Garland, TX, a Dallas suburb. Simon Properties built the complex in the lifestyle-center mold with architecture that encompasses the “Gilded Era” of 1890s to 1930s art deco. In addition to the mix of large stores, restaurants and a movie theater, Firewheel Town Center also features landscaped areas and walkways that provide small-town ambience.

David M. Schwartz, principal of the eponymous, Washington, DC-based architectural firm that drafted the property, said, “We wanted to create an authentic, comfortable, pedestrian-friendly place that cele¬brates daily life. Signage is critically important, because it informs visitors of a facility’s amenities and helps them find their way, and it helps reinforce a theme through typefaces, graphics and materials.”

Lorenc + Yoo specified a series of directional panels, maps, pylons and monuments that reflects main-street Americana, with a heavy emphasis on brick and wrought iron that’s complemented by clean, straightforward typefaces appropriate for a throwback feel.

Simon Properties enlisted Integrated Signs (Lexington, KY) to fabricate the sign program. The property’s signature twin gateways loom over the main entrance. Its brick and concrete pillars are deco¬rated with logo-emblazoned placards, and the arch comprises galvanized steel crafted with details that mimic wrought iron. Integrated built neon-lit channel letters that emit reverse halo lighting, and a complementary oval rests below with push-through, acrylic letters. High-intensity floodlights installed in the structure, and at ground level, add character.

The pylon signs comprise fluted aluminum columns, finials and filigrees atop a faux-stone filigree with formed acrylic that’s sprayed with an opaque coating for a router-cut appearance. Directories and wayfinding markers entail layers of plotter-cut, reflective vinyl installed within fluted, aluminum posts.

Strickler Signs

Strickler Signs (New Oxford, PA) began as a commercial and neon shop in John Strickler’s basement in 1972. Ten years later, the company began devoting its energies entirely to electric signs. Brian Strickler, John’s son and the company’s current owner, said malls and shopping centers comprise approximately 20% of his business, which primarily encompasses Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia (with occasional dalliances into the Midwest).

Over the years, Strickler worked through increasingly tight deadlines imposed by retail-property managers, but fortunately, they’ve become more savvy to appropriate material choices and the scale required to execute effective sign programs. Electronic message centers represent a significant portion of the company’s business, but Strickler’s seen relatively little demand for them in mall signage.

The company developed signage and graphics for Gateway Gettysburg, a shopping center in the historic Pennsylvania town that features big-box retailers and a movie theatre that plays historical and patriotic films. Strickler said, “Our goal was marrying the historic and the contemporary into an old-fashioned, yet elaborate, program that reinforced its Victorian architecture.”

Its main-ID sign comprises an HDU architectural cap, which it contracted from |1772|, that’s routed with acrylic, push-through letters made from .125-in. aluminum and internal, fluorescent illumination. The theater features a solvent-ink print Strickler subcontracted to a local print provider that displays a scene from a movie about the Battle of Gettysburg, and exposed-neon channel letters reside above the theater’s front door and on its side walls.

In an effort to maintain the town’s “historic” flavor, Gettysburg’s civic leaders proscribed any on-premise signage that exceeded 40 sq. ft. Fortunately, Strickler had a well-placed financier.

“[Property owner] John Monahan is very involved in local activities, and he made sure the zoning board understood how economically beneficial the project would be, and the variance sailed through,” he said.

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