The Development of Safety Signs

The future of the safety sign has always been viewed as particularly stable because safety signs are a valuable resource that are needed when it comes to health and safety measures at work and in public facilities. However, due to recent changes in the way that we create and design health and safety signs, it looks like their future is in even safer hands than we originally thought.

Technological Advancements
Some of the recent advances in technology and the equipment that we use to create, design, and print health and safety signs have allowed us to customize them in ways that we would never have thought possible before. As a result of the progress made in printing equipment and technology, the safety sign industry has seen a significant boost in sales, and we expect this number will not falter any time soon.

However, an increase in the production and the sale of health and safety signs is not the only result of developments within technology. Today, technology has advanced so much that you can sit in the privacy of your own home and access a website that will allow you to design your own health and safety signs. You can also customize signs to comply with a number of different laws that are put into place each year. Through this customization of health and safety sign templates, you can make the purpose of the sign very specific; if you have an understanding of human interaction with signs, you can make amendments that will suit a particular audience or age group that will make the sign more effective.

With more rules and regulations being put into place each year to make public facilities and our working environment safer, some of the biggest distributors and supplies of signs have begun to offer services whereby a customer can access a wide range of design tools from their websites in order to produce a unique, high-quality sign. This sign can take a matter of minutes to create or can take several hours; this depends upon the preferences of the user and whether the person is pleased with the decision he or she has made.

The majority of signs that clients customize are pre-made templates from OSHA and ANSI, however, it is possible for clients to create their own sign from a blank canvas. The online tools give a large amount of freedom because often you can select the size, texture, color, wording, and even the images used on the sign.

How Printing Equipment has Changed
The printing equipment that we use today is virtually unrecognizable when you compare it to printing equipment used as recently as 1940. Some of the latest printing equipment has become so advanced that we have begun to use ElectroInk in order to produce signs and images. ElectroInk works by placing very small particles of colored ink into an Imaging Oil where they are suspended. A voltage can then be passed through the Imaging Oil in order to attract or repel the ink particles and to create a very thin, extremely smooth plastic layer on the surface of the paper or material you are using. Due to the fact that the layer of plastic is incredibly thin, the quality, style, and texture of the material that it is placed on is not lost.

The progress did not stop there. Today, 3D printers allow us to create a number of objects at a stunning quality. Some of the items that have been created so far through the use of 3D printing include prosthetics, firearms, sculptures, clothing, and even hearing aids.

The idea is quite simple; you can create a design online or on your computer, and when you click print, the 3D printer will be able to take your design and turn it into a 3D object. This means that a customer can design a health or safety sign online and, once he's happy with the design and has placed the order, it will be received by the company and the design will be transformed into an incredibly detailed 3D sign.

The Advantages of Advancement
If employees at a company or a working environment have the facilities to produce signs or labels on its premises, they could print all of their safety signs in-house, which would make it much easier for them to customize and create health and safety signs. Due to the continuous change within the print industry, the operating systems of the printing equipment are so simple that it is possible for companies to create their own signs with staff members using the equipment without prior training. This also means staff members can create signs to prevent potential accidents within the working environment as soon as they come across a risk.

There is an assortment of other advantages to the continual progression and improvement of printing equipment. It's also important that we utilize what is available to us in order to improve health and safety within the workplace and to reduce the number of accidents that occur.

Mark Lane is a marketing advisor at Direct Signs, http://www.directsigns.co.uk/.

Posted by Mark Lane on Dec 05, 2013