Privacy
What we hold about you, and why.
Short version: we keep what we need to make, deliver and invoice your signs, nothing for advertising, and this site sets no cookies. The long version is below, in plain English. Last updated 13 September 2026.
Who we are
The Sign Studio makes signs for buildings in Yorkshire and ships across the UK. For anything on this page, the person to write to is at hello@thesignstudio.co.uk. That address is read by a person, not a ticket system.
What we collect, and when
Reading this site
Nothing. No cookies, no analytics, no third-party scripts or fonts. Our web server keeps the ordinary access log that every server keeps (the address your request came from, the page and the time), which we use only to keep the site running.
Starting a project
A project name, a town or site, and the room list you paste. If you give an email address so we can send you the project link, we keep that too. None of this needs an account: the project link is the key, and anyone holding it can open the project.
Designing
The signs you design, and anything you upload to help design them: a logo, and a photo of a door or wall if you use the on-the-wall view. A photo stays on your project and is never printed, shared or used anywhere else. Remove it from the project and the file is deleted.
Approving
When someone approves or asks for changes through an approval link, we keep the name they typed, their decision and their note, against the sign it was about. If you ask us to email an approval link to someone, we send it and keep only a masked record that it went (the first letter and the domain, not the address).
Ordering
To make and deliver a set we need a name and an email address to invoice, a delivery name and address, and, if you give them, a phone number, a company name, a purchase-order number, a date you need the signs by and any notes. That is the whole list. The order form refuses anything else.
Writing to us
Your email and what it says, in the mailbox you wrote to.
Why we hold it
To do the job you asked for: draw the signs, price them, get them approved by the people you choose, make them, deliver them and invoice them. That is a contract between you and us, and it is the legal basis for everything above. We also keep the record of what was ordered and paid because tax law requires it.
We do not use anything you give us for marketing. We do not sell it, share it for advertising, or build profiles from it. If we ever want to use a photo of a finished job to show other customers, we will ask you first, in writing.
How long we keep it
- Projects and designs - for as long as the project exists, so you can reorder or add to a set. Ask and we will archive or erase it.
- Orders and invoices - six years after the tax year they fall in, because that is the record HMRC requires us to keep.
- Wall photos - until you remove them from the project or the project is erased.
- Approval decisions - with the project, because they are the record of what was signed off before it was made.
- Emails - in the mailbox, for as long as the conversation is useful, then deleted.
Who else sees it
Two companies handle data on our behalf, and only to provide their service to us:
- Hetzner hosts the server that runs this site and the designer, in the European Union.
- Zoho carries our email, from a data centre in the European Union.
When your signs ship, the courier receives the delivery name and address, because that is how a parcel arrives. Nobody else receives anything, unless the law requires it.
Keeping it safe
Everything travels over an encrypted connection. Your project is opened by its link, so treat the link as you would a key: share it with the people who should be designing, and give approvers the separate approval link instead, which lets them see and approve but not edit. If a link gets into the wrong hands, tell us and we will close it and issue a new one. Our own logs never carry a full email address, and our staff console is on a separate, password-protected login.
Your rights
You can ask us for a copy of what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to erase it. Write to hello@thesignstudio.co.uk from the address we know you by, and we will answer within a month, usually much sooner. Erasure removes you as a person from our records; the bare commercial record of an order that has been invoiced stays for the tax period, without your details on it.
If you think we have handled your information badly and we have not put it right, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.
Changes to this page
If what we collect or why changes, this page changes with it and the date at the top moves. We will not quietly widen it.