Signage is the signs put up to guide people about. Clear signage, poor signage, install new signage.
It is a collective noun for the whole system rather than any one sign, and it is trade language: architects and councils say signage where anybody else says signs. Good signage tells you where you are as well as where to go.
1nounsignageThe signs put up to guide people about.
“The hospital's signage was so confusing that we got lost twice.”
signage is a system.
Sign plus -age, a twentieth-century formation. The -age ending collects things into a mass, as in baggage.
Proto-Indo-European
*sekʷ-
Latin
signum — a mark; sign; token
Old French
signe
Old English
seġn — sign; mark; token
Middle English
signe
English
sign
English, today
signage
Built from
From sign + age. sign comes from Middle English signe, sygne, syng, seine, sine, syne, from Old English seġn (“sign; mark; token”) and Old French signe, seing (“sign; mark; signature”); both from Latin signum (“a mark; sign; token”); root uncertain. a doublet of signum and signal. Partially displaced native token.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA