Reading time: About 1 minute
Signage writing is a demanding art. Yet is looks so easy that few small companies take it seriously enough. They make this mistake at their peril…
Signs are harder to write than they appear. In addition to attending to grammar and spelling, you also need to watch the unwritten messages you’re sending out. I wrote earlier in the year about some bad signage in my neighbourhood.
Now, up pops another bad sign. The photograph, above, is one I took myself. The blurry bit, at the top, is where I have used Photoshop to disguise the name of the company — no need to embarrass them, I figure.
But the sign is for a funeral home. I don’t know if they had professional advice to add the line “Come in and say hello The coffee is on.” If they did, they should ask for their money back.
Who would go into a funeral home for coffee? The idea sounds idiotic outside of small-town American, circa 1930s, where perhaps your friend’s dad ran the place and really wouldn’t mind having you drop by for coffee. Making matters worse, the building is new and sterile looking — not the kind of place you can imagine wanting to put your feet up and “chat” with anyone.
What this sign says to me is: Here is a company that wants to appear jovial and friendly but is pretty certain it’s never going to have to serve real coffee to utter strangers. It seems phoney. Not the type of place I want to go to when a loved one has died.
This is not the message they intended, I’m sure. But it’s the message they’ve delivered. So sad.
