The BSGA Column Deadline critical
President of the British Sign & Graphics Association, David Allen, ponders what it must be like to have a career where there are minimal deadlines, when deadlines are so critical in the sign making world.
Let the fun begin Unlike the one like that that whooshed past me this month, rarely are we allowed to miss a deadline, no matter how unrealistic or seemingly unfair. No matter how long a project might have been in development it’s likely that the signage will only get thought through toward the end. Then the fun begins. You submit the first quotes and designs, not enough budget, go again and the clock is really ticking now so the balance needs to be struck between what the client wants and what can feasibly made in the time that’s left, that will meet the client’s budget. All these challenges we as a trade
I
always fancied myself as being a writer. I wrote plays at school and earlier still in school life I
could easily lose myself in a story. But as I write this, another deadline missed, I was pondering what it must be like to have a career where there are minimal deadlines or only self-imposed ones. Just the other day someone involved
in a project we are doing said to me ‘you dwelling on making a decision has no bearing on my workload I will get to it when my workload allows’. Not a statement we sign businesses
can use. There is a good chance that the client will go elsewhere, or a project opens with no branding if we did.
A ticking clock The time between the client deciding they need new signs or graphics and them actually getting in touch we can only guess at, but once the decision is made the clock starts ticking, and fast. Whether it is getting a visit booked in to survey, providing a quote or getting drawings. It’s on the clock, but then it might stop for a while, but always the required date stays fixed. Get the go ahead and off the clock goes again.
| 44 | September/October 2025 I am sure everyone in this process gets
frustrated at times. I know I do. It almost seems that everyone else in the chain is allowed time – time to design, time to refine and decide – but we as sign providers must fit into whatever time is left. Of course, we are sometimes our own worst enemy. We’ve all read the articles of firms racing to complete large scale roll outs in short timescales, making it seem the norm for the industry at large. We’ve probably all experienced jobs
on site where we are having to jostle around other trades to get somewhere ready before the official opening. We have even had instances where one part of a client’s team is barring entry at a particular time while another is insisting, we must complete!
A line in the sand Deadlines, are that line in the sand that everything must be completed by. That irremovable force that everything runs up against. But should we be like some other trades? Lots just continue to plod ever slower to the end date with no regard to anyone else! Often, we’re called in very late in a program yet we make the difference between successful delivery of the project or not.
meet head on and conquer. It would nice if we could educate our clients to give us more time or even work alongside them more. But one of the strong points of our trade is that we deliver exceptional results every time. Most of the time to do this the
industry has evolved around the needs of our customers accepting that lack of time will always be a thing we have to deal with, means we’ve long since abandoned old and outdated processes. We’ve harnessed the greater use of technology to enable us to meet tighter deadlines. In the years since the first digital
equipment was available there’s been huge strides in performance. I’m old enough to remember using an OHP to produce drawings to size to hand cut acrylic text, a process that could take a few days. Now we simply type in what we want or upload our clients’ files and within a short space of time we can produce what’s required, multiple times. Quotes once typed by hand then neatly filed once the job was complete in case a repeat was ever needed, all replaced by CRMs. I don’t mind technology. In fact, I
embrace it. I enjoy using it but there was something visceral in the signs made by hand that doesn’t quite exist in today’s CAD CAM world, maybe even that term is out of date now too. Much like the deadline for this article.
www.signupdate.co.uk
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