I was walking down the street the other day and I noticed a new restaurant. I later saw my neighbor and told her about the place and that we should go down there and try it out. “Oh, it’s a good place. I eat there all the time,” she said. “What do you mean all the time?” I asked. “It’s NEW!” “No it’s not,” she told me. “They’ve been around for years. They just happened to get a new sign.” I thought about it and realized maybe the place was there but I hadn’t noticed it before! The big pink and blue buzzing neon signs they recently put up made me think it was a new place, but it wasn’t! I had been passing that restaurant every day for years but I never even saw it there. It just blended in with all the other places and it never stood out. That made me realize a good neon sign is a real eye catcher!
When I was younger, I always wanted a neon sign shaped in my name for my living room. I thought it would make a cool piece of décor. I don’t know what it is about neon signs but there’s something special about them that people love. It might be the bright colors, the unique shapes, the occasional little flicker and buzz caused by the neon gas that makes them perfect in their own way, but you never walk past a place with a neon sign and not notice it—that’s for sure. It might be that so many of them are different, or that others are the same, like the beer advertising lights in bars. Using neon signs are a great way to advertise a business right on your own property. If you have to get a sign, you may as well get one that will serve as a beacon and billboard without the cost!
The other kind of sign that I’m slightly obsessed with is those LED signs that you can program. I like that you can customize them and write scrolling notes across them. These lights are cool because they are environmentally friendly—they use way less electricity than a neon sign, and they also save businesses paper plus the time and money it would take to have a paper sign printed. A store owner can advertise a different special every day across an LED sign and it takes seconds to set up. A bank can advertise new interest rates with minimal effort. I often see beauty salons offering specials on manicure/pedicures advertised on LED signs and this has successfully lured me in for some impulse pampering.
Ultimately, though, I have a dream that I will put an LED sign in the rear window of my car, so that when someone driving on the road is being annoying, I can write them a rude message about how they are driving and then drive in front of them so they can read it! Of course this wouldn’t be legal because it’s too distracting, but a girl can dream, can she not?