why i'm fascinated by signs
by Sarah

The importance given to signing has come a long way since I started out as a innocent young graduate working as a general designer for one of the country’s larger sign manufacturers back in 1989.

My first few years of “proper work” were varied; designing packaging, furniture layouts, price lists, a little bit of product design and the occasional sign…I also spent quite a while on the factory floor seeing how things were made and being sent out to get “sky hooks” or asked to wait outside for the delivery of “a long stand” !

An American sign magazine called Identity  used to land on my desk every couple of months (sadly no longer published).  I became fascinated by the design and originality of the signing schemes featured by people called “Environmental Graphic Designers”.  This in comparison to the institutional style stuff I witnessed in manufacture over here.  I’ve always maintained creative choice of shape, typeface and colours should nt necessarily add to the cost of a project.

Opportunities to put some of this alternative stateside thinking soon came my way.  I got to assemble proposals for a number of the new universities and healthcare trusts which were formed during the early 90s.  This included looking at the visual design, construction for manufacture and planning of where signs were to go and what they should say.

1995 saw the first part of a new piece of legislation known as the DDA (Disabilities Discrimination Act) come into force — not before time in terms of accessibility for all, but potentially challenging for the UK sign industry (the environmental graphic designers and US sign manufacturers had already been working to the American version for several years, many projects case studied in Identity).

In the mid 90s I changed employer, moving to a sales-based job for a design-led sign company who were well established in London and the South East.  This gave me the chance to get involved in major signing projects throughout the North of England.  Many of these were lottery-funded public buildings, with large budgets and high expectations !

After 7 years of being involved at the front end of sales and project inception I became frustrated with chasing ever increasing sales targets and loosing touch with sign projects once an order had been placed.

Picto was established in 2002.  I wanted to put into practice all I had leant in terms of manufacturing and assembling signing schemes, while providing clients with a continuous service from inception through to sign installation.  Over the last five years the company has been very fortunate to work with many forward thinking clients who appreciate our commitment to quality and design.