Our  hanging yard sign panels are screen-printed double-sided on .125" solid polyethylene.  The perfect choice for a sign panel, this is the panel material other sign companies charge extra for!  The panels are treated with a matte finish for enhanced appearance and to reduce scratching.  Up to four holes may be drilled to your specifications at no extra charge.  These panels also fit our slide-in frames (as well as many other frames), which may be ordered separately.

ASK US ABOUT "POWER-BUNDLE" PRICING!

The sign prices above represent conventional solid color screen-printing.  Fades. half-tones and digital printing require additional services which will be quoted on an individual basis.  Typically, a photographic image adds $16 per sign.  1-800-270-1883.

 To Order Signs, Please Call 800-270-1883

Starting a new real estate company?
Need new signs?
Where do you start?

The company name

In most cases you have already decided on a name, and if not, that is simply a matter of your preference.  Concise, easy to remember, web friendly, and imaginative – works every time. 

But what about a logo

The next step is typically the design of a logo, and there is a lot to consider here.  From a sign manufacturer’s point of view, we always prefer designing the logo for you rather than utilizing your “designer’s creation”.  While there are a lot of excellent designers out there, we find that a large number of them design wonderful logos for letterheads, websites and business cards but never consider the logo’s usage on a yard sign.  Their logos often combine your company name with geometric design elements such as ellipses and swooshes, or houses and the like which then render your name as a very small percentage of the size of the logo.  While this looks great on a business card, your name is unreadable on a yard sign.  The lettering is simply too small or too ornate to be read from 100 feet away at 30 miles per hour. 

Sign designers do not make this mistake with logos.  Readability is the focus of our business.  While we will also utilize these important design elements, we keep your name as the principle part of the logo and thus, outdoor sign friendly.  If you have already had your logo designed, and it meets the description above, consider letting us “adapt” the logo for outdoor signage.  You’ll be happy in the long run. 

What goes on the sign?

Probably less that you may want.  Keep your signs simple and readable.  Most readers will only have the opportunity to read one or two lines of the sign unless they are extremely interested in you or the property for sale.  Display your company name, your name, and a contact number.  Other information on the sign may look good and may be important but it must be kept small enough as to not distract from the vital message.  All good sign designers know, “busy signs don’t get read”.  Twelve years in the sign designing business has given us a pretty good feel for readability.  Let’s talk. 

How many signs do I need?

Please don’t confuse our answer with a sales pitch.  Only you can determine your needs of course, but there are a few things to consider.  Pricing in the sign business is based entirely on quantity. For example, have you ever ordered business cards and found that you can get 500 cards for $90 but 1,000 cards for $100?  What happens there?  Like the sign business, all of your money is spent on the creation of the design, the set up of the printing press, and some administrative fees for the sales and marketing departments.  Once the press is set up and rolling, the actual amount of cards printed is insignificant to the overall price paid.

Similarly, once we have gone through all of the processes necessary to set up our sign presses, printing an additional 10 or 50 or 100 signs takes only minutes longer.  That’s why we may offer signs with pricing such as 10 for $200 while 20 may cost only $250.  That second set of ten signs costs only $50 more!  But 10 today and 10 tomorrow will cost $400 – Ouch!   In the printing world, more is cheaper in the long run, so look to the future and plan ahead. 

What type of material should I choose for a sign panel?

Well, admittedly, this is truly going to be a bit of a sales pitch.  After twelve years in the real estate sign business, and after selling hundreds of thousands of signs to thousands of customers, we have settled in on polyethylene, or HDPE.  We just don't believe that there is a better choice out there and have chosen polyethylene to be our signature premium product. 

Plywood, or pressed wood panels like duron or duraboard look pretty good initially and will provide a reasonably attractive panel for about two years, but not much more.  Once the panel's corners get nicked or scratched, moisture enters the panels, swells up, and well you know the rest of the story.  We've seen companies add a varnish coating to these particle board panels, but this doesn't seem to make a considerable difference.

Steel panels are heavy, they bend, they scratch, they rust, they cut you.  We don't like them and have only used them a few times.

 Aluminum panels are a great option for some people.  Aluminum signs can look great for many years but you have to take care of them.  If you are using an installer, your signs will be rattling around in the back of a work truck picking up scratches and gouges on every bump.  The shiny surface of the aluminum panels really shows off scratches and the panels tend to look old and worn in a short period of time.  If you install your own signs and are committed to taking good care of their surfaces, they are a pretty nice option.

Another popular panels option out there is PVC or polyvinyl chloride.  They look really nice and contemporary and a lot of people have tried them - ONCE!  While PVC looks nice, it doesn't just break, it shatters.  If you live in a climate where temperatures commonly dip below freezing levels, PVC will not work for you.  Cold weather and a little wind and your sign is on the ground in pieces.  If you've used them in the past, you know.  Don't feel too bad, we actually sold them at VIKING in the 90's!   Kept, indoors, it's a great sign substrate.

Similar to PVC is polystyrene.  We used to make model airplanes out of this stuff.  It is also fairly brittle in cold weather, and the white surface quickly yellows with exposure to sun rays.  Stay away from polystyrene.

There are a few synthetic wood panels hitting the market and we've started to try them with a few customers.  They look fairly nice, are economical and we haven't received any negative feedback yet.  However, the jury is still out here and we just don't have enough experience with them to begin marketing these panels as a premium option.  More on this in the future.

Corrugated plastic panels, whether polyethylene or polypropylene are a great sign substrate.  T he fluted light-weight panels hold ink remarkably well, look good for years, and are very inexpensive.  They however, can not be your choice for a premium yard sign panel.  The panels are too light-weight to hold up to windy weather without special fastening methods in a frame.  They are certainly too light to be used in a hanging application as they will sail like a kite in the breeze.  We offer them as an inexpensive alternative in all of our products, but be aware of their limitations.  We love corrugated plastic and we sell a ton of it, but choose its usage wisely. 

That brings us to polyethylene, our clear choice for a premium panel.  Polyethylene provides for a very long-lasting panel that will offer many years of service.  After years of experience, we have chosen polyethylene to be our panel to recommend.  It must be mentioned however that this product has a reputation for bowing, and that is quite legitimate with some HDPE.  We utilize a panel that is "stress relieved" at the manufacturer and this process eliminates almost all of the bowing.  If your are extremely fussy over this, we assure you that the panel will not be "perfectly flat".  However, we feel that the benefits to polyethylene certainly outweigh this issue.  Polyethylene panels are absolutely waterproof and not subject to weather in any way.  They are absolutely unbreakable and are of course guaranteed against breakage.  They will not bend, rust, turn yellow, or chalk like the other materials previously mentioned.  They are not nearly as susceptable to scratching or gouging as an aluminum panel.  The same panel may be used in a frame or in a hanging application.  The panels may be drilled and no grommets are necessary in the holes.  We really like this stuff!  We are certain that you will too.

How about those unique, eye-catching shapes?

Circles, ovals, houses, and diamonds, oh my!  We get requests for them on a regular basis and the bottom line is this: You pay for what you get.  They are expensive to produce and difficult for another company to reproduce.  The cost of a special cutout die often goes over $400 before we even start the job.   It just seems to us that at the end of the day, the benefits don’t outweigh the additional expense. 

Should I choose hanging panels or framed yard signs?   

Sorry, but the answer is BOTH.  If we had to choose between one or the other, our preference is to utilize a panel hanging from a wood yard arm, installed by a contracted installer.  Most of these installers will inventory all of your signs, install them at your listed property within about 48 hours, and do it all for about $20 to $30.  That just seems like a bargain for a busy professional.  By hiring an installer, you will not have to deal with frozen or sun-baked soil, cold, maybe rusty iron frames, and will not have to deal with those noisy frames poking holes in your car's leather interior.  However, it's true that  installers are not available in all areas.  And the angle-iron frames look pretty good and can be had for a little over $20 each.  Plastic yard arms are becoming a bit more popular but we hear that they are not holding up well over time and possible abuse.  (Think kids and baseball bats).  We offer a variety of angle-iron frames.  We do not offer the plastic posts.  Local installers are listed on our website. 

Thank you for choosing VIKING!