- What it is
- Two panels hinged at the top so the sign stands unsupported, holding the graphic either behind a snap frame — four hinged aluminium edges that flip open by hand — or on a rigid panel that drops into a slot. The snap-frame version is the one worth owning: the poster is changed in the doorway without tools, and the frame carries poster after poster for years. Water-fillable bases are the outdoor version, and on an exposed frontage they matter more than the artwork does.
- What it is printed on
For a sheltered site, a coated poster stock with a laminate on the face. For anything exposed to rain, sun or a mop, a synthetic stock — a polypropylene film with no fibre in it at all, so there is nothing for water to swell and nothing to tear along. A paper poster in a pavement frame in this climate goes wavy the first afternoon it rains, and that ripple is visible from across the street long before the message is.
- Synthetic stock, 200 micron0.20 mmNo fibre in the sheet, so a wet pavement site has nothing to swell and nothing to tear along.
- Gloss art paper, 157 gsm0.13 mmThe sheltered-site option: laminated on the face, and cheap enough to change as often as the message does.
- How it feels
- Synthetic stock is smooth and faintly waxy; bend it and it springs back instead of creasing. Coated poster stock is thinner and cooler and snaps rather than bends — it feels like a poster, which is exactly right when it is being changed weekly. Both sit dead flat behind a snap frame, and both take a fingerprint on the way in, so they are handled by the edges.
- What it suits
- Retail frontage, food and beverage, showflat approaches, event wayfinding along a route, and any message that changes faster than a fixed sign could be replaced. It does not suit a windy corridor between buildings without a weighted base — an A-frame that has blown over is a liability rather than a sign — and it does not suit a frontage where the pavement is not yours to occupy. That permission is the first question, not the last one.
- Lead time
- Standard turnaround is 7–14 working days. Counted from approved artwork rather than from the enquiry.
- The common mistake
- Designing to the sheet size and forgetting the frame lip. A snap frame overlaps the poster on all four edges, so a border drawn to the trim is eaten unevenly and any type near the edge is clipped on one side and not the other. Work to the visible aperture with a clear margin, and put the message in the upper half of the panel — a pavement sign is read at an angle, over the heads of the people already in front of it.
Print idea
A-frame pavement sign
Two hinged panels that stand on their own, holding a poster behind a snap frame. The frame outlives every poster it carries, so the running cost is the sheet and nothing else.
Standard turnaround is 7–14 working days.
What a-frame pavement sign is
Two panels hinged at the top so the sign stands unsupported, holding the graphic either behind a snap frame — four hinged aluminium edges that flip open by hand — or on a rigid panel that drops into a slot. The snap-frame version is the one worth owning: the poster is changed in the doorway without tools, and the frame carries poster after poster for years. Water-fillable bases are the outdoor version, and on an exposed frontage they matter more than the artwork does.
For a sheltered site, a coated poster stock with a laminate on the face. For anything exposed to rain, sun or a mop, a synthetic stock — a polypropylene film with no fibre in it at all, so there is nothing for water to swell and nothing to tear along. A paper poster in a pavement frame in this climate goes wavy the first afternoon it rains, and that ripple is visible from across the street long before the message is.
No plateThe product is a snap frame and a water-fillable base; the print in it is a plain poster in a slot with no layer order, no relief, no allowance and no edge specific to it. If a standard poster size is ever committed to the panel table this can carry a drop — until then the frame is the thing worth photographing, not drawing.
The specification
Six fields, and the last one is the useful one.
The same six questions are answered for every entry in this section, in the same order, so two objects can be compared without reading two pages of prose. The mistake is stated last and stated plainly, because it is the one that costs a reprint and it is the reason this page is worth sending to a colleague.
Where this sits.
Every entry is indexed three ways, because a buyer arrives knowing the occasion, the object or the material and almost never all three.
- Application
- Material and effect
Also worth looking at
- Fluted polypropylene panelsStandard turnaround is 7–14 working days.
- Synthetic stock menus and tagsStandard turnaround is 7–14 working days.
- Roll-up banner standStandard turnaround is 7–14 working days.
- Acrylic standoff signStandard turnaround is 7–14 working days.
- Window and floor graphicsStandard turnaround is 7–14 working days.
- SignageThe specification, and how it is quoted
- Point of saleThe specification, and how it is quoted
- Every print idea, indexed three waysThe section index
- The materials libraryCaliper, weight and what each finish costs
Send the specification for this, and it comes back quoted.
Every job is quoted from its specification — stock, quantity, sides, finish, size and deadline.
- Quantity
- Stock — or the feel you want, if you do not know the stock
- Sides printed
- Finish
- Flat and finished size
- The deadline
Artwork is welcome but not required to start. Email sales@ezprint.com.sg if you would rather attach files.