Before & After: Signage Refresh for an Automotive Repair Shop

A great sign doesn’t just identify a business—it helps customers notice it, recognize it, and know they’ve arrived at the right place. This automotive repair shop received a signage refresh that gave the building a cleaner, brighter, and more professional appearance while keeping the established red, white, blue, and checkered-flag branding. The project included three different types of signage: an awning sign, a flex face sign, and a pan face sign. Each serves a different purpose and requires a different style of construction. Awning Sign The entrance features a red awning displaying “Complete Automotive Repairs.” An awning sign combines signage with a projecting awning structure. The fabric or other covering material is installed over a frame, creating a highly visible area where a business name, logo, or message can be displayed. In this project, refreshing the awning brought back the strong red color and crisp white lettering. Because the awning sits directly over the entrance, it also helps visually define where customers should enter the business. Awning signs are a great choice for: • Storefront entrances • Retail businesses • Restaurants • Automotive businesses • Buildings that need additional dimension and visibility Flex Face Sign The side of the building is the custom flag shape sign Complete Automotive Repair with the business logo with its distinctive checkered-flag design. This is a flex face sign, which uses a flexible, durable sign material stretched tightly across a cabinet or frame. Graphics can be printed directly onto the flexible face, allowing large logos, lettering, phone numbers, and other branding elements to be reproduced clearly. Flex face signs are especially useful for larger sign cabinets because the flexible material can cover a substantial area without requiring a large rigid panel. For this location, the refreshed face makes the American Transmission branding easier to read and gives much stronger visibility from the road. Flex face signs work well for: • Large illuminated sign cabinets • Shopping centers • Automotive facilities • High-visibility roadside businesses • Large-format building signage Pan Face Sign The front of the building features the sign with American Transmission sign with the business logo and phone number. This is a pan face sign. A pan face is typically made from a rigid plastic material that is formed or molded so the face has depth rather than remaining completely flat. The formed face fits over a sign cabinet and can feature translucent graphics when illumination is required. That added dimension gives a pan face sign a substantial, finished appearance and makes it a popular option for permanent exterior business signage. The updated face restores the bold red and blue colors, improves contrast, and makes the American Transmission branding stand out against the light-colored metal building. Pan face signs are commonly used for: • Building-mounted signs • Illuminated cabinet signs • Pole and monument signs • Retail storefronts • Automotive and service businesses Why Replace Aging Sign Faces? Outdoor signage takes a beating from sunlight, heat, rain, wind, and years of exposure. Over time, colors can fade, materials can weather, and graphics that were once bold and easy to read can lose their impact. Replacing or recovering existing sign faces can dramatically update a property without necessarily replacing every part of the existing sign structure. As this before-and-after shows, restoring the color and readability of the awning, flex face, and pan face signage gives the entire property a more polished and consistent appearance.