This page is about designing an illuminated sign for a street where the reader approaches from the side and under cover, which is the normal condition on Šutna and around Glavni trg. It covers the difference between a flush and a projecting sign in an arcade, how the soffit is fixed into without damaging it, what the long straight sightline lets you do at the open end, which constructions suit the frontages that are actually here, how output is set beside residential windows, and what documentation we hand over.
Illuminated signage in Kamnik — manufacturing, installation, quote
Šutna is the reason signage in Kamnik behaves differently from signage anywhere else nearby. The street is long, straight and narrow, lined on one side by frontages set behind arcades and closed at its end by the Franciscan monastery and the rock of Mali grad above it. Under an arcade the passer-by never sees a frontage face-on until they are directly beneath it, which makes a flush sign nearly useless and a projecting one nearly essential; along the open stretch towards Glavni trg the sightline is suddenly two hundred metres long and the same sign is read from a distance instead. One street, two completely different signage problems, and most of the mistakes here come from treating them as one.
Flush or projecting, under an arcade?
The reader arrives from the side, not from in front
A sign fixed flat on a frontage behind an arcade is invisible to anybody walking along the arcade, because they are travelling parallel to it and the columns block the view until they are past. The sign that works there projects at right angles from the wall or hangs from the arch, so that it presents its face to somebody approaching from either direction. That is a double-sided construction, which changes the weight, the fixing and the cable route. It also has to be high enough to clear people and low enough to sit under the vault, and that window is often less than half a metre.
What may a projecting sign be fixed to?
The pier, not the vault
In an arcade the load goes into a pier or into solid masonry at the springing of the arch, never into the underside of the vault itself, which is doing structural work of its own. The bracket is designed so that its moment is carried by two well-separated fixings in sound material, and it is set out on the survey with a drill and a probe rather than assumed from the elevation. Cable is taken through an existing joint or a discreet chase and sleeved, and where the fabric is historic the fixings go into mortar joints rather than into stone or brick, so that a future removal leaves the material untouched.
What does the long sightline at the open end allow?
Two hundred metres of straight street is an asset
Where Šutna opens out towards Glavni trg the situation reverses: the reader sees the frontage from a long way off and approaches head-on. That is the one place in the old town where a flush sign, sized generously and read at distance, makes complete sense, and where a modest projecting sign will simply disappear. Letter height follows from the distance: roughly a centimetre for every four to five metres of reading distance is a workable starting figure, checked against the actual position rather than assumed. A sign designed for the arcade and a sign designed for this view are different objects, and a business with a frontage in both conditions usually needs both.
Which constructions suit the frontages that are here?
Built-up letters, halo lighting and the double-sided blade
On the plastered frontages of the old town, individual built-up letters remain the least intrusive option: they carry their own depth, each is fixed on its own small standoff, and the total load is spread. Halo lighting, with opaque letters and light spilling onto the wall behind, suits a pale render particularly well and needs markedly less output than a face-lit letter to read at night. For the arcade the natural form is a small double-sided blade or a hanging bracket sign, illuminated internally at low output; the temptation to make it large should be resisted, because under a vault a large sign is not read from further away, it is simply closer to the reader's head.
How bright, with flats above the shop?
Two measured levels, and where the light is allowed to go
Most of these frontages have dwellings directly above them, and a narrow street bounces light between facing walls. We set the output on site at two levels, one for the hour after the shops close and a lower one for the night, measure both, write them into the handover sheet and leave them with you so the setting survives a change of tenant. Just as important is where the light goes: an upward-facing source under an arcade lights the vault and the windows above it, so sources are shielded and aimed downward. Neither of these is expensive to get right at commissioning and both are awkward to fix afterwards.
What do you receive from us, and what is yours to do?
A technical file, and an application we do not make
You receive dimensioned fabrication drawings, an elevation of the sign in position, the weight and the fixing loads at each point, the connected electrical load, the material and finish specification, and the detail of how the wall is penetrated and sealed. That is what a building owner, a co-ownership or an authority will want to see. Rules do apply to what may be put on a frontage in this town, and they differ from building to building; submitting the file and obtaining whatever consent applies is the client's part of the process, and we make no promises about the outcome of it.
