Self-adhesive film

Building signage and outdoor advertising

Many customers find it difficult to find their way around without adequate signage. That is why today’s topic is: building signage.

YOW! Shop

26 January 2022

2 min read

A pre-labelled white sign reading ‘TOR 4 – NEPATA VERTRIEB’ is attached to a metal bracket on the façade of a building with a glass front

The second tutorial of the year! We’re delighted to present a cool guide today on how you can add lettering to signs yourself. Many companies are familiar with this problem: without adequate signage, customers can’t find their way around or end up getting lost. Suppliers are also well aware of this issue. We want to solve this problem for you today, so stay tuned!

Choose any sign that’s suitable for your lettering. It doesn’t need to be anything fancy, as we’ll be covering the background as well, so that nothing of the sign itself will be visible afterwards.

Step one: Cleaning

Clean your board thoroughly so that no lint or similar particles show through when you’re laminating or sticking things onto it. Kitchen roll and glass cleaner will do the trick. It’s best to wipe the surfaces several times – better safe than sorry!

A white sign saying ‘Wash hands’ with kitchen roll on a green chopping mat, with glass cleaner and kitchen roll behind it – the first step before laminating

Step two: Conceal the background

To spruce up worn-out signs, we recommend laminating them. You can do this by applying the self-adhesive film over the entire surface of the sign. Afterwards, all you need to do is trim off the excess edges.

A hand is smoothing white self-adhesive film onto a sign to cover its entire surface; the rest of the film is still raised

Step 3: Plotting

Now you need to plot your chosen design onto any self-adhesive film. We always like to use the Secabo T120 II cutting plotter. Of course, you can use as many colours as you like. You’ll find a wide selection of these in our shop.

Secabo T120 II cutting plotter with pressure rollers and cutting head, plotting a design onto black self-adhesive film

Step 4: Weeding

By now, you’re all familiar with weeding. As you know, the easiest way to do this is with a pair of weeding tweezers.

A man is weeding black plotter film from a white sign bearing the lettering ‘OR 2’ at a green workbench, with a cutting plotter behind him

Step 5: Transfer film

Cover the weeded design with a transfer film. For greater flexibility, we recommend using the transfer film dispenser. Use a squeegee from our shop to smooth the surface completely, then cut out the design.

Transfer film is pulled from the dispenser over the weeded grey NEPATA lettering on the backing paper; a squeegee lies next to it

Step 6: Sticking it on

When applying the stickers, every signage technician uses different tricks to make the whole process as easy as possible. To make it clearer for you, we’ve filmed this tutorial and posted it on YouTube. Have a look. There, you can see the tips from our application engineer, Ed.