Recently in Typestries:Carved & Dimensional Signs Category

Here's a Job Anthony and I went out to install yesterday at the Museum of New Jersey Maritime History in Beach Haven. It required roof access on the elevation facing the bay with our typical winter west winds. Yesterday wasn't as bad as monday when we went to do the job–that day it was so windy I had to hold on to the deck above to keep from being blown off. It was a bit colder yesterday, but the winds were only 15 knots, not the 25 we had on Monday! Hey-at least the wind was blowing in the right direction to help hold the pattern up against the wall. The job turned out great—you're looking at 23 karat gold leaf letters "pin mounted" to the wall. I'm really excited too as we're getting ready to start the interior museum graphics, displays and lettering as well. We really enjoy creating museum, interpretive and exhibit graphics—maybe it's my science background. The marriage of information, data and beautifully executed graphics and displays gets me going! Hey, how many people can say they've read The Visual Display of Quantitative Information?

We would be delighted to create a truly unique and one of a kind holiday gift for you, your friends and family. Here we share a few of the steps and techniques used to create these wonderful signs.

We begin the process of creating the signs right here on our computerized router. In this photo, we're carving the lettering into a sign (a blank of high density urethane) that has had the background painted and a protective mask applied.

When the router has completed the carving toolpath, the sign begins to take shape.

Here, we have painted the lettering and the base coat for the border. The shiny stuff you see on the border is the "glue" that holds the 23k gold leaf. Its real name is "size." We paint yellow underneath the gold size to add to the brilliance of the finish. Gold leafing is a centuries old art form that produces stunningly brilliant sign elements.

A completed holiday gift sign with a dark blue background.

And a link to the hiigh resolution PDF information is here.

If you would like to see a few "in person" we have samples in both the Ship Bottom and Manahawkin stores. We're also capable of handling your custom gift sign requests including custom colors, shapes and sizes.

It's befitting that a newspaper that's been published since 1933 would have a sign that's elegant and effective yet created with many pieces of 2006 technology. This sign was a lot of fun to make and an excellent example of how we combine all of the high tech tools in the shop at Typestries. We started this sign with a sheet of 3/4" Gatorfoam. It's a resin and paper coated sheet of foam, and offers excellent properties for interior use. It cuts on the CNC router beautifully, which allowed us to add the dimension of raised letters to the main byline on the sign. It accepts paint well, yielding an excellent finish on the raised letters. And, it's a great surface to receive high resolution digitally printed vinyl graphics. Since this piece would be seen up close, we cranked up the resolution of our new printer. The newspaper staff could not believe how clear the picture was on the sign. For the installation, we took advantage of another high tech product, which yielded in a fastener free installation for a clean look. Since we used the Gatorfoam, the sign was relatively light—so we were able to attach the sign to the wall with 3M VHB tape. With the gripping power of the VHB tape, this sign's never coming down.

You can check out the outlook, here. I'm guessing they'll be reporting on their new sign, too!

Here's a unique application of our sin carving capabilities. Almost seven years ago we were challenged by Stafford Township's Planet Playground committee to produce donor recognition fence pickets for a new community built playground concept that was in the planning stages. We really liked the idea of the community built playground concept which was popularized by two architectural firms, leathers and learning structures. The architect wanted the committee to invest in a special jig for a hand router to make the pickets. We knew that completing over 1000 of these by hand would be an insurmountable and dangerous task for volunteers. We devised a system to manufacture the pickets on our Gerber Sabre router. Since then we have perfected our system and have made sponsor recognition pickets for many other community built playground projects. Here's a few shots of our process, working on pickets for the Barnegat Playground project. Admittedly this is a dirty nasty bit of sign making that does not generate any real revenue for us, but that's counteracted by the fact that we're doing a tremendous service to the communities in which we live, work and play.

Carving the pickets on the router.

Painting the carved copy.

Watching paint dry......

When the church originally came in they requested a simple carved sign. Once we started fabricating this we decided it needed a bit of a Typestries touch. We fabricated the prismatic, raised logo elements with our Gerber Sabre CNC router, finished and applied the pieces, and were instantly impressed with the final appearance. Clean and neat with just the right amount of dimension. Thanks to the Beach Haven Terrace Methodist church for allowing us to complete this project.

Radio stations love to have guests in studio. And, even more they love to toot their own horns with photos of guests in studio. Our custom dimensional logos and photo backdrops lend a level of professionalism to any studio environment and the photographs of guests in studio.

At WMCX, Monmouth University's student radio, students are immersed in a truly professional program. Monmouth students are exposed to some of the most sophisticated studios in the college radio world, which better prepares them for the "real" radio world after graduation! The have full automation, an interview studio, off air production studios and a full featured training classroom, all with networked automation systems (and yes, they do have CD's-even though most commercial stations receive music via electronic download-the cd's are ripped into the audio vault).

Pictured are a few signs that we have made and installed in the studios at the Plangere building over the years. I never had a chance to photograph these until a visit to campus the other day.

If you are looking for interior logos for your studio or reception areas, give us a call.

One of the neatest things about our area is all of the great surprises we run into on our installs. When I first heard about the Marconi Road Camp Evans project, my first thought was how neat! info-Age is a science and technology center at the Camp Evans property in Wall, NJ. infoage.org has all of the info, but basically the technological achievements of the Marconi family, specifically in wireless communications, paved the way for modern day satellite and radio communications. The
Marconi complex in Wall is in the process of being rejuvenated into a full fledged learning center and museum. The sign install was as much fun as seeing all of the old antennas, buildings, etc.

The sign panel in final prep.

The installed sign.

First Marconi satellite antenna to successfully communicate to space. Paved the way for Nasa communications for Lunar missions.

There's nothing like the beauty of a gold leaf sign on a blue sky sunny day. I had to run to Beach Haven today and grabbed this shot of this beautiful sign that we completed last summer for Bay Village in Beach Haven on 9th Street. The letters are prismatic and raised off of the background, which has been textured to give added depth. The sign is mounted to the roof with custom welded aluminum brackets.

Here's a sign that we had a really fun time making, but we just don't see that often! It's a combination of high resolution digitally printed graphics and dimensional layers, and is really stunning out at the site. We printed the graphics with our high quality flatbed uv-curing printer, cut the shapes on our Gerber CNC router and assembled the entire job with multiple layers for a truly unique sign.

You wont see this unless you take a trip to the Cape May County Zoo -It marks the entrance to the Savannah at the rear of the zoo. If you have never been to the Cape May Zoo, and you live anywhere in South Jersey, you are missing a real treat, in any season (ok, we've never been there when it's really cold!) It's a low-cost family day, and just big enough to keep kids attention but not wear them out.

A note on the design of this sign. It was designed by Randy Slamowitz a graphic designer/illustrator for the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, a truly great interpretive graphic artist.

Clients often ask, If you make a three dimensional sign for me, does it have to incorporate the "wood grain" look? The answer is definitely no! With our use of HDU, the dimensional possibilities are endless. Here's a excellent example of the use of dimension to enhance the appearance and the impact of a sign. The prospective diner knows right away that this restaurant is not a run of the mill place....it's an excellent, classy establishment, and their sign speaks volumes to that. More importantly, their sign works for them day in and day out, all day long, and it's in prime position for all to see. That's a difficult thing to accomplish with many other forms of advertising, and that's what makes a sign your single best business promotion investment.