If you’re an educator, you want to provide your students with a safe learning environment at school. Sadly, most of the potential risks at school are caused by individuals who forget safety protocols or who might not even know what they are.
An effective way to address these safety risks is to put up good signage around the school. Most safety signs fall into the category of wayfinding signs – signs that provide information, direction, identification, or regulation
What Kinds Of Signs Would Your School Need?
To create a safe school environment for students, teachers, and visitors alike, you need to post signs that them where to go, what to do, and how to behave safely.
For example, let’s consider the recent developments in the pandemic. Schools are starting to open up again, and kids are excited to go back. They’re so excited to see their friends that they’ll forget half the things their parents taught them about safety at school.
This is where a clear and well-designed sign can help. The signs you need to post could remind your students to wash their hands often, use hand sanitizers, keep their masks on, stay at least six feet apart from someone else, don’t share school supplies, etc.
Other safety signs are general ones that apply to all school situations like don’t run in the hallway, don’t litter, etc.
Signs also identify areas where only school staff is allowed or where the custodian is working. Signs can also clearly mark entrances and exits so kids won’t run into each other, or know where the emergency exits are.
Tailor Your Sign To the Audience
We all know many kids have very short attention spans. If your sign has an inspiring message but it looks boring and is full of words, the kids won’t pay attention to it.
However, if you make the sign bright, colorful, and fun, and keep your message short, you’ll increase the likelihood that they’ll pay attention and remember the sign’s meaning.
Do the adults, including teachers, staff, and visitors, need signage too? Of course they do!
Adults forget things too, so they also need clear, and easily understandable reminders. For example, if there’s a teachers’ breakroom, it won’t hurt to post a sign reminding your colleagues to keep the kitchen area clean, wipe up their spills, turn off the coffee pot, don’t burn the popcorn, etc. And the safety signs around COVID-19 apply to them just as much as the children.
Visitors definitely need good signage because they don’t know where rooms are in your school and they don’t know any of the procedures which may differ from school to school.
How Will You Get All This Done?
You can try making signs yourself, but unless you have the skills of a professional graphics designer and access to sign-making materials, your signs won’t function well or last very long.
Besides, you don’t have the time. So, the best approach is to contact a professional signage company. They do this for a living, and they can whip up as many beautiful signs as you need. You can discuss with them your ideas and the messages you want to get across, and the design team will make you awesome signs that you’ll be proud to post around your school.
