This page is about permanently illuminated signage, meaning shopfronts, façade lettering and entrance identification, rather than about screens carrying changing content. It sets out what each of the town's positions needs, what we build, and which drawings we hand over so your architect can complete a submission.
Illuminated signage in Novo mesto — manufacturing, installation, quote
Novo mesto asks two entirely separate questions of an illuminated sign, and the answer that suits one is wrong for the other. Under the arcades of Glavni trg, in the shadow of the belfries of the Cathedral of St Nicholas and the church of St Leonard, a sign is seen from four metres by somebody walking. Out along Otoška cesta by the Supernova centre and through the Bršljin works, it is seen from a moving car at sixty metres. Nothing about the two specifications is shared.
Two lighting regimes in one small town
Arcade shade against open roadside
An arcade is permanently in shade, and that shade is the reason arcade signs so often look crude. Owners specify output for open daylight, hang it in a colonnade, and end up with a sign that glares in the evening and washes out the stonework behind it. The correct move under the arches is downwards: modest output, warm colour temperature, and a light source that is not visible from an angle. On the roadside strip the reverse applies, since the sign competes with headlights, forecourt lighting and the illuminated fascias of neighbours.
Three constructions, three effects
Halo, face-lit letter, illuminated tray
A halo-lit letter is opaque at the front and throws light onto the wall behind, so the letterform reads as a silhouette. It suits historic masonry because the wall itself carries part of the effect and the fitting stays modest. A face-lit letter glows across its front face and is legible from much further, which is what a retail unit on a busy road needs. An illuminated tray, the single box carrying the whole name, is the cheapest and the least discriminating of the three; it earns its place at a workshop entrance or a trade counter, and rarely on a listed frontage.
The entrance totem at an industrial site
Read at speed, from a slip road
At the gate of a manufacturing site the sign has one job: tell a driver who is already slowing whether this is the right entrance. That means a short name, generous stroke width, and a face that stays legible when it is dirty, because a gate sign gets dirty. We build these as a double-sided illuminated element on a steel post, with the electrical gear at the base where a maintenance electrician can reach it without a lift. The base detail is agreed with whoever maintains the yard surface, since a foundation in the middle of an HGV turning circle needs a different collar from one in a lawn.
Output after dark near housing
The Kandija problem
Signs across the river from the centre sit close to flats, and a bright fascia opposite a bedroom window generates complaints that no amount of good design will settle afterwards. The fix is planned before installation: a photocell and a timer that drop the sign to a low night level and switch it off entirely at an agreed hour. We record the levels we set at handover and leave them with the electrical documentation. If a neighbour raises the matter later, the owner can show what the sign was set to and adjust from a known baseline rather than guessing.
Fixing to the building you actually have
Old plaster, new insulation
On a historic frontage the fixing goes into sound masonry through the render, not into the render, and the fixing count is kept low and regular so the elevation is not peppered with holes. Where the wall is already damp, we stand the sign off on spacers to keep an air gap behind it. On a newer building with external insulation the load has to reach the structure through the insulation layer, using thermally broken brackets. Getting this wrong shows up two winters later as staining on the render, which is why the fixing method is part of the offer rather than a decision for installation day.
The drawing set and the permit file
What we supply, and what remains yours
Signage on a façade is subject to local rules, and in a historic centre those rules are stricter than on a retail park. We do not make promises about outcomes. What we do is produce the technical annexes: elevation drawings to scale, the sign's dimensions and stand-off, the construction and materials, the electrical load, and the luminance settings. Those annexes are what an architect or an agent submits on your behalf. If a change is required, we redraw and reissue rather than argue, and the fabrication does not start until the drawing that was approved is the drawing we are building from.
