New Features Released in Identia Online

Last weekend we released three exciting new and improved features in Identia Online. These new features include a redesigned set of filters for the Project List, a Copy Rows feature in the sign schedule, and improved tools for doing take-offs and project programming.

For more info on these features, please see the release announcement.

The demographics of signage

What do we really know about the architectural sign industry?

I have long been frustrated that so little hard information exists about the size and nature of the architectural sign industry. Over the years, I have compared notes with magazine publishers, designers, and owners of architectural sign companies, and the subject was a topic of discussion again last month at the ISA Sign Expo in Las Vegas. Unfortunately, at the end of the day, it’s clear that there is scant real evidence on which to base a quantitative description of our industry. Opinions, hunches, and anecdotal observations are poor substitutes for facts.

Let’s start with this basic question: How many architectural sign companies are there in North America? To be included in the count, a company must meet one of the following criteria: it must sell only architectural signage, or it must derive a significant portion of its total sales revenue from architectural sign projects. Where would you go, and what resources would you use to try and answer this question?

Some information can be gleaned from surveys that have been conducted by trade organizations and publications; mailing lists based on SIC codes present another means by which we can identify large numbers of sign companies that could be included in the count; and web-based search engines created specifically for the sign industry make it possible to filter data base lists of sign companies by product categories. Information from all of these sources sheds a little light on our question, but the picture is still not very precise. Hoping that I was not going off on some kind of fool’s errand, I decided to simply try to count individual architectural sign companies, while keeping in mind the following data points:

1. An industry survey conducted by Signs of the Times reports 33,000 sign companies in North America
2. In a recent member survey conducted by the International Sign Association, only 4.5% of the respondents specifically identified their firms as “architectural” sign companies
3. “Data Keepers” in the same organization, ISA, report that 33% of its members state that architectural signage work is part of their business
4. The publisher of Sign and Digital Graphics magazine reports that in their most recent subscriber survey, 32.5% of respondents indicated “architectural” signage is part of their business
5. The same source reports that in prior years, when subscribers were asked to classify their business by selecting just one category, only 2.5% selected the “architectural” category
6. Items 2-5 above are self-reported statistics submitted by individual sign companies and are not independently confirmed

The phrase “architectural signage” means different things to different people, and its usage and context varies throughout the sign industry and the design community. I have developed a check list of 4 attributes that can be used to distinguish “architectural” from “non-architectural” signs.

1. Architectural signs conform to a higher than average product quality standard when compared to the entire range of general signage products produced by the industry at large.
2. Architectural signs are normally specified by a 3rd party designer such as a graphic designer, an architect, an interior designer, etc; sometimes the specifier functions within the organizational structure of the purchaser as with facility-management design professionals, or within the sign fabrication company as a professional design service provider.
3. Architectural signs normally exist as part of a coordinated sign program, rather than as individual sign elements.
4. Architectural signs typically convey some type of utilitarian information that the sign viewer needs in order to gain access to a particular facility or environment; hence the growing use of the word “wayfinding” in the architectural signage industry today.

I began the counting process with a web-based search engine that claims to have more than 30,000 sign companies in its database. I looked for firms that said they could produce and sell “architectural” signage by executing individual searches, using the same filtering criteria, in 35 major US and Canadian metropolitan markets. This exercise returned a total of 4,480 individual companies, of which 3,482 (78%) maintain promotional websites with photographic examples of their work. I then conducted a visual inspection of each website and identified 366 companies that obviously met my definition of an architectural sign company. Let’s call these companies Group A. I also identified an additional 325 companies that probably met my criteria, and placed them in Group B.

The goal of the visual survey was to find examples of architectural signs within the product portfolio section of each website, and to answer two questions. How prevalent in the portfolio was architectural signage, as compared with other types of signs? Was there sufficient evidence to support the conclusion that architectural signage constitutes a “significant” portion of a given company’s sales revenue? Admittedly, the process of surveying and evaluating all of these websites was subjective, but I was guided by 25 years of experience in the industry, and the duck theory which holds that if something has webbed feet and goes quack-quack, chances are excellent it’s a duck. In this situation, I felt pretty comfortable trusting my instincts. This survey effort identified a pool of 3,482 potential candidates, determined that 691 (20%) of these met the architectural sign company criteria, and therefore, I believe it is reasonable to suggest the following:

If there are approximately 30,000 sign companies in North America, and if 1/3 of these companies say they are involved with architectural signage, we can assume a pool of about 10,000 companies. My survey of website portfolios indicates that 20% of the 10,000 are likely to be, according to our criteria, authentic architectural sign companies. Therefore, my hypothesis is that there are approximately 2,000 architectural sign companies in North America.

A number of questions arise right away. If there are 2,000 architectural sign companies out there, and I have identified 691, where are the remaining 1,309? There are a couple of things to keep in mind as we wrestle with this. First, we should remember that based on our survey, 22% of the sign companies in our pool of candidates do not have websites and were not, therefore, eligible for selection. Second, we should assume that some architectural sign companies are not in the search engine’s database. Third, and most important, our search covered only 35 major urban markets. We know from the US Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis that there are more than 100 additional 2nd, 3rd, and 4th tier market zones within the United States alone. A substantial number of the remaining 1,309 companies are located in these smaller markets.

Some confusion also surrounds the discrepancy between the large quantity of companies that say architectural signage is a portion of their business, (33%), and the comparatively small number of companies that self-identify exclusively as architectural sign companies (2.5% - 4.5%). My search did confirm one fact that may help to explain the numbers: it is absolutely clear that the degree of involvement in the architectural sign business by individual companies varies dramatically from very high to very low. This may indicate there are a relatively small number of companies with a very high degree of involvement with architectural signage, and a much larger number of companies with a very low level of involvement.

This effort to count architectural sign companies was not a “scientific” one, and at least 3 qualifications should be noted:

• The assumption that there are about 30,000 sign companies in North America is unverified; therefore, the derived quantity of 2,000 architectural sign companies is also unverified. The absence of verification does not mean that the data is necessarily inaccurate, it does mean that it has not been independently confirmed.
• My definition of architectural signage, and my criteria for selecting an architectural signage company from a pool of candidates, are both subjective.
• My survey of websites could not obtain any measurement of the portion of a particular sign company’s sales revenue that is attributable to architectural signage. My selection criteria required that the portion be “significant”, but my judgment was not based on any quantifiable data.

These qualifications notwithstanding, I think it is important to note that we did succeed in compiling a hard count of 691 real architectural sign companies, and that all of them have been individually vetted. If we are going to develop a body of quantifiable information about the nature of architectural sign companies, and the architectural sign business as a whole, we have to move away from the current reliance on self-reported data. The commercial interests of all sign companies involved in the architectural sector of the industry, their customers, and their suppliers would be well served by the availability of this kind of information.

I welcome your comments!

Article on Type Designer

Interesting article in yesterday's "Washington Post" about type designer Matthew Carter. Carter is responsible for creating Verdana (used in this blog!), Georgia, Tahoma, and other fonts that we see and use every day.

Here's a highlight from the article:

" . . . when Carter designs a typeface, he typically starts with a lowercase h. It has an ascender (the stroke going up on the left), but it also reveals a lot about the character of the typeface. From a lowercase h, he explains, you can tell what a lowercase l, m and n will look like. Graphic designers, however, usually identify typefaces by more flamboyant letters of the alphabet, such as a capital "Q" or a lowercase "g." The fact that Carter is more of a lowercase h guy says much about his design style.

He creates "the fonts that do the heavy lifting as opposed to being flashy," says New York-based type designer Jonathan Hoefler. . . ."

We like to think that Carter's approach to design is similar to ours, and that the Jonathan Hoefler's quote could apply to the Identia Sign System as well.

Link to the article

Backups vs. Versioning

"What about backups?"

This is a question that is often asked when we are conducting demos of Identia Online. Sometimes there is some confusion between "backups" and "versioning". The short answer is that Identia Online conducts backups but has no versioning.

We back up our database nightly to another server as part of our disaster recovery program. In addition, any newly uploaded files (plans, My Storage files, etc.) are backed up to a third server. Therefore, if there is a critical server malfunction with our primary application server that requires recovery, we can restore the entire system back to the previous day’s data backup.

These backups are really intended to protect your data in the event of catastrophe. We do not systematically do any account level backups — or versioning — for individual subscribers. In terms of your data, what you see on the site is what you get. This means that you cannot revert back to a version of your project’s data from the previous night.

This versioning is very complicated to do technically in a database application such as Identia Online. It’s also why Identia Online does not have an Undo features. Both of these features are nearly impossible to implement in an online database-driven system. However, the advantage an online system is that your data is always up to date and current. You don’t have to worry about what version of the data you are looking at. Versions can sometimes be a blessing and a curse.

One of the things that we are exploring is giving subscribers the ability to backup their data to their own servers and systems. This would provide any additional level of protection knowing that your data was backed up on your own system as well as ours. We will update you on any developments as we explore this area more thoroughly.

Finally, we realize that unintentional mistakes do happen with software. If you do find that you have mistakenly deleted an entire project, or committed an equally significant mistake with your data, please do not hesitate to contact us immediately. We may be able to recover and salvage your data.

Where did the idea for Identia Online come from?

Some time ago I was challenged by the blunt-spoken CEO of a company with whom I was negotiating a strategic partnership to answer a simple question:

He asked: What do we need you for?

The question was confrontational and provocative. It nagged at me during my flight back to Boston and forced me to figure out what our company had that was of real value in the marketplace. In a surprisingly short time I concluded that the most valuable asset we possess is a clear understanding of the process by which architectural sign programs are designed and implemented. A review of this process reveals a characteristic common to all sign programs: multiple stakeholders have a need to create, share, and review loads of information. Stakeholders include building owners, sign companies, architects, designers, general contractors, and product manufacturers. The information includes drawings, sign messages schedules, location plans, specifications, and so on. It was pretty easy to jump from a need to share information to the concept of a website that would facilitate and organize the storage and exchange of that information.

The moral of this little story is not about insight or creativity. It is about the importance of listening carefully to questions, even when they are a little hostile. It is also about trying hard to answer questions honestly. Reflecting back, I have wondered why the concept did not occur to me years ago. I am sure that without the question, Identia Online would not exist today.

Welcome to the Identia blog!

This is the blog for Identia. In this blog, we will cover topics about the Identia Sign System and the Identia Online application. Stay tuned for more updates!