Signs
Promote Your Business With Big Colour
TYPE OF SIGNS
Big Colour Design, Manufacture and Install a vast range of signs in Newcastle Lake Macquarie and the Hunter areas. From 3D and Illuminated lettering for Shop Fronts and Fit-outs to PVC Banners and Trade Show signage for portable signage solutions.
SIGN IMPACT
Big Colour has years in understanding and designing signage around Newcastle to make your business stand out over the rest. We think carefully about how we create your signs, so your company has impacting professional presents.
LANDMARK SIGN
Take a look to see landmark signs and shops fronts. Big Colour has produced in Newcastle, Lake Macquarie and the hunter like Sanbah Surfshop, Drift Bikes, Belflora, 4D Skin Clinic. Big Colour has been making signs for these clients over many years. We build a good trusting relationship with our long term clients and do our very best to serve them with great looking signs. Big Colour understands your shop front is the face of your business and how critical well-designed signs are to you.
Sign Materials
We make signs from many different substrates.
ACM. (Aluminium Composite Material) used indoor-outdoor for most long term signs. Comes sheet form and different thickness. ACM can be rout cut to make individual sign lettering
Corflute. (Corrugated Plastic) used for real estate signs other short terns applications. Comes in sheet form and different thickness
Acrylic. (Perspex) Used for long term indoor outdoor signs, Can be used for making illuminated signs for lightbox applications. Comes sheet form and in different thickness. Acrylic can be rout cut to produce individual sign lettering.
Polycarbonate. (Polycarb) Used for long term indoor outdoor signs, Can be used for making illuminated signs for lightbox applications. Comes in sheet form, on the roll and different thickness considered almost unbreakable.
Printing
There is much more to making signs and graphics than just buying a printer and pressing print. Here we will break down the variety of printers we use for different applications.
PRINTING SIGNS
On average, most printed signs will not last as long as vinyl cut signs. Printing signs means using Ink to make your sign or graphics. Because UV light breaks down Ink faster than vinyl, most printed graphics will fade more quickly than a vinyl cut sign. That said. We can print very complex photos and signage when we use a printer, that we can’t do when vinyl cutting. At times we combine both spot vinyl cut and printed graphics. We do this on vehicle graphics often.
FLATBED PRINTING SIGNS
Big Colour has a different printer for different applications. Unlike many sign companies. Big Colour has the ability to flatbed print directly to the sign substrate. By direct printing to the material, this allows us to save dollars on vinyl rolls, and also eliminates the need to apply printed vinyl to the substrate. After printing directly to the substrate, we often do use a UV overlaminate. The laminate helps make the sign durable in the outdoor elements.
We can print to Corflute, ACM, Acrylics, Timber and almost any other material you can imagine.
ROLL TO ROLL GRAPHICS PRINTING
Roll to Roll printing is when you load a roll of material into the printer. Unlike our Flatbed printer, our Roll to Roll printers can print to only roll material. We print to Vinyl, PVC Banner, Fabrics, Canvas, and other soft rolled material. All vehicle graphics get printed using our Roll to Roll Printer. After printing, the vinyl is overlaminate. The overlaminate protects the vinyl film making a big difference to the durability of your graphics.
Vinyl Cut Signs
Your sign design will determine how we manufacture your signs, for instance, by having a simple design with few colours. It might be more cost-effective to cut vinyl. Cutting vinyl means using existing selected pre-made vinyl colours.
We buy vinyl colours on the roll and have many colour options we can use. To cut vinyl, we need what’s called a vector vinyl. Vector files allow us to manipulate the design. Some well-known vector files are EPS, AI and PDF. We can scale and make your sign bigger or smaller, using these file types. Most signage we design is through the software, Adobe Illustrator. Illustrator allows us to create striking creative signage and designs.
Once your design is complete, it’s now time to cut the vinyl roll. To do this, we then send the vector file from illustrator to the plotter/vinyl cutter. Once we cut the vinyl. It’s now time to weed out the excess vinyl manually away from the roll. When we finish weeding the vinyl, our next step is to apply what we call, application tape to the vinyl lettering.
Application tape is like masking tape. Now the final step is to attach the vinyl to the sign panel substrate. To do this, we remove the application tape from the roll. The application tape also pulls the vinyl letting off the roll, together with the vinyl and application tape. We then stick down the application tape to the sign panel. Because the application tape is less sticky than vinyl, we can easily remove the application tape from the substrate, and now the letting is permanently stuck down on the panel.
The finished product is what we call a vinyl cut sign. Depending on what vinyl we use, Your sign can last between 5-8 years. Sun and UV light play a big part in how well your sign will last. For instance, if your sign panel is North facing. Your signage will degrade much faster than if it was facing south away from the sun. All these factors play a big part in the durability of your sign graphics.
