— Princeton, New Jersey
Gogi Signs designs, fabricates, prints, installs, repairs and replaces custom signs for Princeton businesses storefront and projecting signs on Nassau Street, Palmer Square and Witherspoon Street, awnings and window lettering on historic façades, and the directories and suite signs that shared office entrances depend on.
20+ Years Experience
Serving New Jersey Since 2005
In-House Production
Fabrication & Large-Format Printing
Commercial Installation
Insured Installation Crew
Princeton & Central Jersey
Local Sign Service
— Sign Company in Princeton
Princeton businesses operate in a setting unlike most New Jersey commercial markets. Nassau Street storefronts sit across from Princeton University, Palmer Square combines retail, dining, offices and hospitality, Witherspoon Street carries its own business character, and professional offices, medical practices, institutions and shopping centers extend beyond the downtown core.
The 2023 Master Plan identifies Nassau Street, Palmer Square and Witherspoon Street as the municipality’s Central Business District while examining the other commercial districts separately — and Nassau Street is described as the primary commercial street, with the municipality currently planning another streetscape project focused on the pedestrian experience along its north side.
That produces a business district where architecture, pedestrian traffic, neighboring storefronts and historic character matter as much as sign size. A business may be identified first from across Nassau Street and again from beside the storefront. A professional office may sit upstairs behind a shared entrance. A restaurant may depend on an awning, projecting sign, windows and door identification working together rather than one oversized façade sign.
— Projecting Signs
Princeton’s ordinance allows projecting signs for ground-floor businesses under stated conditions, and they are specific enough to design against from the start:
The wall sign faces across the street. The projecting sign faces the people already walking beside the building — and for restaurants, boutiques, professional services, cafés, salons, galleries and smaller retailers that second viewing angle does real work.
One detail is worth acting on: Princeton’s rules encourage symbols, images and graphic elements on projecting signs rather than lettering alone. That is an invitation, not a restriction, and it means these can be designed as part of the storefront identity rather than as miniature wall signs — which is also what reads best at eight square feet.
— Approval Order
Princeton’s Zoning Office identifies business signs as projects requiring a zoning permit, and notes that new signage for an incoming business requires zoning approval. For a property inside a Historic Preservation District there is a step in front of that one.
Historic review comes before zoning review, not alongside it — and façade changes within those districts may trigger additional review as well. That makes it a scheduling fact as much as a design one: a historic storefront is not a place to fabricate first and ask afterward, because a sign already built is a sign that can only be altered at cost.
Other properties may fall under individual redevelopment plans or district-specific standards, so one sign-size formula should not be copied across every Princeton address. Before production dimensions are locked we need:
The Zoning Office maintains its zoning map, application resources and zoning viewer for property-specific review. Our team surveys the site and prepares the sign drawings and project information the proposed work needs. The application is filed by you or your landlord. We assist with permits; we do not file them on your behalf.
— Downtown Storefronts
Downtown Princeton rewards signage that works with the building instead of fighting it, and street-level businesses generally do better with a coordinated package than with one sign carrying every message:
Which combination is strongest depends on the frontage. A smaller storefront usually gets more from several restrained points of identification than from one sign trying to carry the name, the offer and the hours at once — and on a narrow Nassau Street bay, restraint is also what the building can physically hold.
— Our Products
Our New Jersey shop produces exterior, interior, fabricated, printed and temporary signage for businesses throughout Princeton.
Custom signs sized and built around the storefront architecture, available mounting area, tenant space and property requirements.
Fabricated illuminated and non-illuminated letters for businesses needing strong exterior identification.
Cut and fabricated letters for storefronts, reception walls, professional offices, lobbies and branded interiors.
Building-mounted identification for downtown locations, built to the eight-square-foot, seven-foot and four-foot limits.
Fabric awnings for restaurants, retail stores, cafés, offices, hospitality properties and commercial entrances.
Business hours, logos, privacy film, printed graphics, temporary promotions and decorative applications.
Dimensional logos, wall lettering, plaques, acrylic signs, metal signs and custom reception identification.
Tenant, floor, department, office and building directories for shared commercial properties, built for individual replacement.
Tactile room identification, Braille signage, restroom signs, accessible identification and directional signs.
— How It Works
Gogi Signs has served New Jersey businesses since 2005, and the work extends considerably beyond fabrication.
01
Site Survey
We measure the storefront, office, lobby or installation area and document the existing signage and mounting conditions.
02
Design and Planning
Artwork is fitted to the actual property, sign dimensions, materials, construction, mounting, viewing conditions and the applicable requirements.
03
Fabrication and Printing
Approved work moves through fabrication, cutting, large-format printing, vinyl production, finishing and electrical assembly where applicable.
04
Installation
Our insured installation crew coordinates site access, removes existing signs where that is included, and installs the completed work.
05
Service and Future Changes
When tenant information changes, awning fabric needs replacement, lighting fails or graphics need updating, we can return to the project.
— Historic Properties
Materials, mounting, illumination, sign proportions, awnings, brackets, façade penetrations and the relationship between the sign and the architecture can all matter on a historic property — and all of them are easier to resolve before anything is cut.
Products that tend to work on older façades here:
The goal is not to make every Princeton storefront look old. A contemporary business does not have to costume itself to sit on a nineteenth-century façade. The goal is identification that belongs on the building rather than reading as something attached to it afterward — which is usually a question of proportion, material and mounting rather than of style.
— Awnings
Awnings fit particularly well across Princeton’s restaurant, retail, hospitality and professional-service districts. One awning identifies the business while also defining a storefront opening, an entrance, a café frontage or an individual tenant bay — which is a lot of work from a single element on a narrow downtown building.
We manufacture custom fabric awnings with business names, logos, custom graphics, custom colors, valance lettering, new fabric covers, replacement covers and custom frames where required. Existing awning frames can also be inspected to determine whether recovering makes sense before a rebuild is quoted.
Historic properties and district-specific rules are reviewed before a new awning design moves into fabrication. An awning is a fabricated assembly with a frame sized to a specific opening, so a change required at review is not a change that can be made on site.
— Offices & Directories
Princeton has a substantial professional-services market alongside its retail and hospitality businesses — law firms, financial services, consultants, medical practices, architects, technology companies, real estate firms and nonprofits, many of them in buildings where the business is not visible from the sidewalk at all. A shared entrance may serve several offices. A practice may sit upstairs. A property may combine restaurants or retailers at street level with offices above.
A coordinated package covers exterior identification, building directories placed at primary entrances or in lobbies, reception signs, suite identification with room numbers and replaceable tenant plaques, ADA tactile and Braille signs, privacy graphics for conference rooms, offices and glass partitions, and wayfinding connecting entrances, elevators, stairs, meeting rooms and shared spaces.
For property managers the requirement is replaceability. Tenant names change, and a directory system should let one business listing change without the whole sign being remade — lobby, wall-mounted, changeable, floor and elevator directories all built on that basis. The result should read as one sign family rather than several unrelated products added as needs arose.
— Who We Work With
The downtown draws residents, students, employees and visitors for shopping, dining, culture and events — and Palmer Square alone combines shops, restaurants, offices, residences and hospitality inside the commercial core.
Retail Stores
Storefront signs, projecting signs, window campaigns, awnings, seasonal graphics, sale signage and interior branding.
Restaurants and Cafés
Exterior signs, awnings, window lettering, menu graphics, hours and entrance information, pickup signs and interior graphics.
Professional Offices
Directories, dimensional logos, suite signs, reception identification, privacy film and ADA signs.
Medical Practices
Exterior identification, reception signs, directories, room signs, privacy graphics and wayfinding.
Hotels and Hospitality
Entrance signs, reception identification, directories, ADA room signs, event graphics and interior directional signs.
Institutions and Nonprofits
Building identification, office signs, directories, event graphics, ADA signs and wayfinding.
Property Managers
Tenant changes, directories, office signs, repair work, sign removal and recurring property identification.
Contractors and Service
Vehicle lettering, decals, office identification, building signs, banners and commercial graphics.
— Tenant Changeover
An incoming tenant inherits more than empty walls — and on a Princeton façade the approved brackets and mounting points are often the most valuable thing in the space, because each one avoided is a façade penetration that does not need reviewing.
A projecting-sign bracket may be reusable, a directory may need only one tenant panel, a suitable awning frame may accept a new fabric cover and existing mounting may reduce unnecessary façade work. Other components come out because they are damaged, incompatible with the new identity or no longer suitable for the building.
What the changeover covers
This suits retailers, restaurants, professional offices, medical practices, property managers and incoming commercial tenants alike — and where the property is historic, the survey is also where we establish what review the proposed work will need.
— Repair & Refacing
Princeton businesses often occupy established properties with existing signage, and those signs eventually need work. Lighting fails, letters loosen, vinyl ages, awning fabric fades, window graphics change, tenants move and directory information goes out of date.
Gogi Signs repairs and updates commercial signage whether or not our shop originally made it:
Sometimes the existing sign can be repaired. Sometimes keeping an aging structure costs more than replacing it — though on a historic property the calculation also includes the review a replacement may require. We inspect the condition first and quote the appropriate work.
— Serving Princeton
Gogi Signs serves commercial properties throughout Princeton, including businesses around:
Princeton has several distinct commercial settings — Nassau Street, Palmer Square, Witherspoon Street, Princeton Shopping Center, professional-office properties and the commercial areas beyond the downtown core — which is why we treat the property address as part of the sign specification rather than as a delivery detail.
Our service footprint continues through New Brunswick, Edison, Woodbridge, Piscataway, Somerset, Hillsborough, Flemington and the surrounding areas, so a business with more than one Central Jersey location can work from a single fabrication and installation source.
— Get Started
Opening a Nassau Street storefront, updating a professional office, replacing an existing tenant’s signs, adding a building directory, recovering an awning, repairing exterior identification or planning signs throughout a commercial property all start the same way.
Send the address, several photographs and the sign work you are considering. Gogi Signs can handle site measurements, drawings, fabrication, large-format printing, installation, repair and future sign changes from our New Jersey shop.
OUR SHOP
5 W Baltimore Ave, Ste 301 Linden, NJ 07036
Prefer to talk it through?
Tell us if the property is in a Historic Preservation District.
— FAQs
Yes. The Zoning Office states that business signs require a zoning permit, and new signage for an incoming business requires zoning approval.
The order changes. New signage at a property within a Historic Preservation District requires Historic Preservation Commission review before zoning review, and façade work may require additional historic review as well.
Yes, subject to Princeton’s requirements. Ground-floor businesses may generally have one projecting sign on a façade containing a public entrance, limited to eight square feet per face, at least seven feet above grade, projecting no more than four feet, mounted at ninety degrees, with a zoning permit before placement.
No. Princeton’s requirements state that projecting signs cannot exceed the roofline or the wall to which they are attached.
Princeton’s rules encourage symbols, images and graphic elements on projecting signs rather than lettering alone — which also tends to read better at eight square feet from a moving pedestrian.
Possibly. We inspect the bracket, attachment points, size, condition and compatibility with the proposed sign before deciding whether reuse makes sense.
Yes. Dimensional letters, projecting signs, fabric awnings, plaques, window lettering and other restrained fabricated products work well with older architecture. The historic review requirements still need checking for the address.
Yes, where the existing system is designed for replaceable tenant information. If it is not, we can rebuild it as a system that will be.
Yes. We produce tactile and Braille room identification, accessible restroom signs, suite identification, directional signs and other interior signs the project requires.
Send the property address, photographs of the storefront or installation area, your logo or artwork, photographs of existing signage, and any landlord or property sign criteria you have. Historic status and zoning can then be checked against the proposed work.
