Red Hand Consulting
Signage, specified professionally.
Architects appoint us to produce the complete signage specification for their project — sign locations, types, wording, dimensions, materials and artwork — delivered as a signed-off, production-ready package. Powered by our purpose-built specification technology: one controlled source of truth from survey to installation.
The problem
Signage is still specified in circulating spreadsheets.
On most projects, signage lives in Excel sheets and marked-up PDFs emailed back and forth. Versions drift. Wording changes get lost. Nobody can say which schedule the fabricator actually built from — and the architect carries the risk. Unplanned cost overruns from errors and delays routinely exceed 15%.
Red Hand replaces that with one controlled, auditable specification.
How it works
The life of a sign.
Follow one sign from first site visit to documented close-out — every step recorded in the same controlled specification.
- 1
Surveyed
Our team records every sign position on site — photographed and geo-located, even fully offline.
- 2
Placed on the drawings
Each sign is pinned to the architect's actual plan PDFs — and live satellite mapping with real GPS coordinates for outdoor and campus signage — to scale, with type, faces, orientation and mounting encoded.
- 3
Reviewed & approved
Clients and architects approve each sign or request changes with comments — at the desk or walking the site. Every decision timestamped and attributed.
- 4
Released for production
The approved specification freezes as a locked, numbered release — the exact wording, artwork, dimensions and positions the fabricator builds from. Corrections become a new numbered release; the original stays on record.
- 5
Artwork generated
Production-ready vector artwork for every sign face renders directly from the signed-off schedule. No re-keying into design software, no transcription errors.
- 6
Installed & verified
Each sign is tracked to its exact plan position — QR-coded handover to installers, photographed on completion, snagged if there's an issue. Close-out is documented.
Why architects appoint us
De-risked sign-off. Zero version ambiguity.
One source of authority
Every sign lives in a single live specification — plans, schedule, wording and artwork drawn from the same record. Change the wording once and it updates everywhere simultaneously. No version confusion, ever.
A full audit trail on every sign
Who placed it, who changed the wording, who approved it, when, and why — preserved for the life of the project. For compliance-sensitive buildings, this is the accountability layer Excel can never give you.
Professional deliverables
Drawing-standard location plans with title blocks, a full sign schedule with type legend, artwork proofs per sign, and fabrication-ready vector files.
Unambiguous for the sign maker
The fabricator receives one controlled package — never a chain of emailed spreadsheets. What was approved is what gets built.
Case study
University of Fort Hare — Signage Design Manual & Identity System
Lead consultant for a full signage and wayfinding system across three campuses and more than 80 buildings.
- —150-page interactive digital design manual
- —Full modular sign family and typology system
- —Circulation-based wayfinding logic — vehicular and pedestrian
- —Campus-wide architectural elevation placement plans
- —Tender-ready files and a digital asset library for production
Start a project
A specification your client and contractor can't dispute.
Tell us where the project stands and we'll propose the scope — from a single site survey to the full specification package.