Signage such as signs, banners, and flags are often displayed to disseminate information, advertise, and/or to decorate spaces. Many types of signage have designs, such as text and/or images, displayed on solid materials such as vinyl or fabric. However, signage made of solid materials is often not very durable when are subjected to wind gusts, rain, and other elements over time. Exposure to such elements can stretch or tear solid materials, and/or can cause damage to mounting rods.
Signage made of porous materials, such as mesh, often fares better against the elements than signage made of solid, nonporous materials. For instance, wind and rain can at least partially pass through the pores of mesh banners, leading to less wear and tear when compared to nonporous banners. As signage made of porous materials experience lower levels of damaging forces than signage made of solid, nonpourous materials, it can often last longer and/or be more durable. Signage made of porous material also has other advantages over signage made of nonporous material, such as often being lighter and/or more flexible.
However, although constructing signage out of porous material is often desirable, doing so can have unique challenges. One such challenge is with dual-sided signage, in which designs are displayed on both sides of a two-sided sign, flag, banner, or other type of signage. When designs are printed on both sides of a single piece of porous material, ink from one side generally bleeds through the pores of the material and becomes viewable from the opposing side. This tends to obscure the designs on both sides. While in some cases mirror images can be printed on opposing sides, such that ink from one side bleeds through pores into corresponding positions on the reversed mirror image design on the opposite side, many designs cannot be reversed as a mirror image. For example, reversed text would be unreadable, and many logos or other images are not designed to be reversed.
To combat these problems, some dual-sided signage systems have been constructed using layers that each display their own designs. In one method, two separate layers are each printed with a design on one side, and then the non-printed sides of the separate layers are joined together. In another method, designs are printed at different locations along one side of a long piece of material, and then the long material is folded over on itself to create two layers.
However, existing techniques of making dual-sided signage with layers using either porous or non-porous materials have problems with image quality, as designs on a back layer are often still visible through a front layer because the layers are generally placed directly against each other back-to-back. By way of a non-limiting example, FIGS. 1A-1C depict an exemplary embodiment of prior art dual-sided signage 100. As shown in FIGS. 1A-1C, in many existing construction methods, a first panel 102 and a second panel 104 are coupled back-to-back directly with each other, with each of the first panel 102 and second panel 104 being made of porous material such as mesh. A first design 106 is affixed to or printed on a face of the first panel 102, and a second design 108 is affixed to or printed on a face of the second panel 104, as shown in FIG. 1A. The first panel 102 and the second panel 104 are coupled directly back to back, as shown in FIG. 1B. As can be seen from FIG. 1C, when the signage is constructed with traditional layering techniques the second design 108 can be seen in a reversed orientation through the pores of the first panel 102 and second panel 104, such that the second design 108 obscures and conflicts with the first design 106.
Similar problems exist with layered dual sided-signage systems constructed with two layers of nonporous materials, as a design on one layer can still show through a second layer. By way of a non-limiting example, when the sun shines on the back side of a dual-sided sign made of multiple layers of nonporous material, shadows of text or designs on the back layer can impact visibility and/or readability of text or designs on the front layer. By way of another non-limiting example, when the nonporous layers are made of a thin material, the designs on one layer are often still visible through the other layer when the layers are coupled directly back-to-back.
What is needed is a signage system comprising a first panel and second panel, in which the first panel and second panel are at least partially kept apart at a predetermined distance by a plurality of spacers, such that the space between the first panel and second panel can enhance visibility of designs on the first panel and second panel.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds