If you have not been reading Pat McGrew’s ongoing series “Enabling Sales,” I highly recommend that, when you are done with this article, you go check it out (the latest is right below this feature). The last couple of installments have focused on putting together print sample kits to use to sell your capabilities to prospective clients. In the previous installment, she described how to assemble a hypothetical “Marketing Sample Kit” for a bank, identifying the disparate and unique items that banks often need printed, from brochures and other marketing materials promoting their latest offerings or special deals, to complementary signage and display graphics. As Pat points out, while online banking is certainly popular, if you have ever been in a bank branch lately, they are by no means abandoned edifices, with tumbleweeds rolling through the lobby. Get there at the wrong time and you’ll still be stuck in a queue for a short eternity.

Sometimes, though, being stuck in a line is not a bad thing, and it can actually give us some much-needed downtime to take a breath, have a look around, and get a sense of what printed products are currently in vogue.

Since I started covering Wide Format for WhatTheyThink a thousand years ago, I have gotten into the habit of paying attention to signage and other kinds of display graphics whether I am walking down the street, in a shop, or, indeed, in a bank lobby.