Signage we have installed in Al Ahsa

Our work in Al Ahsa is Rowad Al Khaleej Schools: bilingual stainless steel lettering on a dark panel with an illuminated logo above it, identifying the Boys Primary Section. It is a different kind of job from a shopfront or a hotel. A school is read on foot by parents and children at close range and from the road by a driver looking for a turning, and the same sign has to do both. It is also one piece of a set — a campus names its sections, not just itself — so the type and the panel have to hold across every sign that follows.

Campuses need a system rather than a sign. Once a section is named, every other section, gate, building and car park on the site has to be named the same way, in the same type at the same weight, or the place stops reading as one institution. That makes wayfinding the larger half of the job here: monoliths at the entrance, section identification, interior room and floor signage, parking bay markers. Bilingual is not optional in this setting, and Arabic and Latin have to carry equal weight rather than one being an afterthought beneath the other.

Al Ahsa is the furthest we regularly travel — roughly 150 km from the workshop — so a job here is planned as a single trip rather than a series of visits. Measurements are taken once and taken properly, the whole set is fabricated in Dammam, and the crew and the crane come out together to install it.