The first sign a guest reads, carrying names, a date or a company logo. We print welcome signs on acrylic, ACM, foamboard and timber-look board from A1 up to 1200 × 1800 mm, and match the easel to the panel.
A welcome sign is the first piece of signage a guest sees on arrival: one panel carrying names, a date, an event title or a company logo, placed at the entrance so people know they are in the right place. Standard sizes run from A1 through A0 to 900 × 1200 mm. It sets the tone for every other sign in the suite, which is why substrate and finish matter more here than anywhere else.
Made by Melbourne Trade Signs, a large-format print and signage company on Unit 6/43 Orbis Drive, Ravenhall VIC 3023, in Melbourne’s west. Printed in-house and installed Australia-wide. Phone 0415 743 691.
The design side is easy. The part that goes wrong is physics. A 900 × 1200 mm panel on a light easel is a sail, and a Melbourne garden ceremony can deliver a 30 km/h gust with no warning. Signs blow over, easels scratch decking, and acrylic corners chip. Choosing a heavier easel, weighting the legs or dropping one size solves more problems than any material upgrade will.
We make welcome signs at our Ravenhall workshop on Orbis Drive, printing, cutting and finishing in-house rather than brokering the panel out. No minimum applies, so one sign for a single Saturday is ordered the same way as forty for a conference series. Where the sign is part of a bigger suite, we run the whole set on matched stock so the colours line up.
Every welcome sign question comes back to one thing: is it indoors on carpet, or outdoors on grass. That single answer rules out half the materials before design is even discussed.
| Substrate | Weight at A0 | Outdoors | Where it suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5mm foamboard | Very light | Indoors only | Ballrooms, foyers, one-night use |
| 3mm ACM | Light | Yes, months | Garden ceremonies, reusable venue signs |
| 5mm acrylic | Moderate | Yes, short term | Styled entrances up to about A1 |
| 10mm acrylic | Heavy | Yes, short term | Large freestanding panels that must not bow |
| Timber-look board | Light | Sheltered only | Rustic and barn venues, marquee entries |
| Fabric on frame | Light | Sheltered only | Conference and registration entries |
We cut to any dimension, so an odd size to suit an alcove or an existing frame is normal. Note that a panel wider than about a metre needs a broad-footed easel outdoors, whatever it is made from.
Below are the versions we actually get asked for, and the conditions each one is suited to. Where a cheaper option does the same job, we will say so before you order.
Full colour printed onto acrylic sheet, either directly or as a second-surface print behind the sheet for a glass-like depth. Suits designs with florals, colour washes or photographic backgrounds. Use 5mm to A1 and 10mm above, since thinner sheet bows once a panel gets tall.
Solid vinyl characters weeded and applied by hand to a clear panel, so the letters read against whatever is behind the sign. The crispest look available, and the reason to choose it over printing. It needs a plain background: draping, hedging or a dark wall.
Aluminium composite: two aluminium skins over a polyethylene core. Flat, rigid, weatherproof and light for its size. This is the practical answer for outdoor ceremonies and for venues wanting a panel that survives being stacked in a store room between weekends.
Light, flat and sharp to print, which is why it is the default for indoor conference and registration signs. It marks easily and will delaminate if it gets wet, so it belongs inside. For a one-night sign that will not be kept, it is the sensible spend.
A printed woodgrain or textured surface on rigid board, giving the look of a stained timber sign without the weight, the cost or the warping. Suits barn, winery and marquee venues. It is a print, so keep it out of direct rain.
Timber A-frame easels suit styled events, black metal easels suit corporate. Match the easel to the panel: A1 sits happily on a light easel indoors, while 900 × 1200 mm outdoors needs a broad footprint and weight bags on the rear legs.
Outdoors we recommend ACM or acrylic over foamboard, weighted easel legs, and a position out of the funnel between buildings. Where wind is a known problem, a ground-staked frame or a wall fixing removes the risk entirely. Late afternoon gusts catch out more garden ceremonies than rain does.
Registration-desk signage runs to a different brief: logo lockups, sponsor bands, room names and session titles, often across a series of events. We keep the template and change only the text, so the fourth event costs less to produce than the first.
Venues want a sign that survives fifty weekends, not one. That usually means a 3mm ACM or 10mm acrylic panel in a house style, with the couple names or event title changing per booking, or a permanent panel with a changeable insert. We size the panel to the venue easels already on site so nothing new has to be bought each season.
Stylists come to us with a design already set and need it executed on the right substrate at the right size. The value we add is telling them when a chosen material will not hold up at that size or in that position. We also run the rest of the suite on matched stock so the welcome sign does not sit slightly off against the seating chart.
Registration entries, plenary room signs and sponsor welcome boards, usually foamboard or fabric indoors and repeated across several rooms in the same building. Organisers running a series of events want a template that takes new text each time rather than a fresh design, so we hold the file and change only the wording. For full event branding across walls, floors and stands, our sister company Event Signs handles the whole build.
Presentation evenings, open days, fetes and formal balls, where the same event runs again in twelve months. The brief is nearly always a sign that can be used again, which points at ACM with the year left off the artwork, or a reusable frame taking a cheap printed insert swapped out annually. It is the least glamorous option on the list and it is usually the right one.
A logo and a rough idea is enough to begin. If you have a designed file already, the notes below keep it sharp at full size and stop text being trimmed off at the edge.
Artwork help is included in what we do. Send a logo, the wording and any reference images, and we will lay it out, set the type and send a proof back before anything is printed.
Because the printing, cutting and finishing all happen in Ravenhall, a welcome sign does not sit waiting on an outside supplier. Give us the date of the event and we will tell you honestly whether it is achievable rather than promising and hoping. Collect from the workshop Monday to Friday, take delivery anywhere in Melbourne metro or regional Victoria, or freight it interstate.
Yes, provided the substrate and the easel suit the conditions. ACM and acrylic handle sun and rain without complaint; foamboard does not.
The real risk is wind rather than water. A 900 × 1200 mm panel presents over a square metre of face to the breeze, and a light timber easel will not hold it in a gust. Weight the rear legs with sandbags, set the sign out of the wind funnel between buildings, and if the forecast is poor, have somewhere sheltered to move it to.
Cut vinyl gives the sharper, more expensive-looking result on clear acrylic; printing wins whenever the design needs colour or imagery.
Vinyl characters are solid colour with genuinely crisp edges and nothing behind them, so the background shows through the gaps. That is the whole appeal, and it only works if the background is plain. Printing onto acrylic handles gradients, florals and photographs, and is the only sensible option once a design has more than a couple of colours in it.
A0 841 × 1189 mm or 900 × 1200 mm is the right answer for most events, read comfortably from four or five metres.
Go smaller, to A1 or 600 × 900 mm, if the sign sits in a narrow foyer or beside a lectern where people pass within a metre. Go larger, to 1200 × 1800 mm, only if it is wall mounted or on a weighted frame, because a panel that size on an easel is unstable indoors and genuinely unsafe outside.
Yes, and running the suite together is the only reliable way to get an exact match.
Colour on the same file printed weeks apart can drift slightly between runs, and different substrates take ink differently, so a white foamboard sign and a white acrylic sign will not be identical whites. When the welcome sign, seating chart, bar menu and table numbers are produced in one run on matched stock, they read as one set. Send the full list up front and we will schedule them together.
Whatever wording you send, though welcome signs normally carry only names, a date and a short line of text.
Keep it short. This sign is read at a glance while people are still walking, so a headline, two names and a date is the whole job. Long paragraphs of housekeeping information belong on a separate sign near the entrance where people can stop and read. If both are needed, we usually make a second, smaller panel rather than crowding this one.
Yes, if you leave dates and names off the panel and put them on a changeable element instead.
The usual approach for venues and schools is a permanent ACM or acrylic panel carrying the fixed part of the design, with a printed insert, a vinyl overlay or a small secondary sign carrying the detail that changes. Vinyl lettering can be removed and replaced on acrylic without harming the sheet, provided it is lifted carefully and the residue cleaned off with isopropyl alcohol.
The board that goes just inside the door. Sized against guest count rather than the room, in acrylic, ACM or foamboard, with late name changes handled as reprints.
See the detail →Clear, frosted, white, black and mirror sheet in 3mm, 5mm and 10mm, laser cut to shape and lettered for the full run of ceremony and reception pieces.
See the detail →Arrows and wayfinding for everything past the entrance: car park, ceremony, reception and amenities. Corflute on stakes outdoors, A-frames and freestanding panels inside, supplied numbered to a site map.
See the detail →Browse the full list on our A–Z of everything we print, or see how this fits into signage in Melbourne.
Tell us the wording, the size and whether it stands indoors or on grass. Quote back inside two business hours.