1998 Electric Sign Design Contest

Signs of the Times magazine conducts an electric sign design competition each year. This year’s contest received 203 entries for its ten categories.

Judging was based on appearance, originality and theme. Contest judges were Kent Smith, co-owner of Smith Sign Studio in Greeley, Co; Ken McCracken, general manager of German Signs in Denver; Jeff Benge of Gardner Sign Co., Denver; and Jack Wisbon, vice president of ABC Sign Products, Ft. Collins, Co.

Below is a list of First place winners, for each category. To view a full list of winners, purchase the Septemeber 1998 issue of Signs of the Times magazine here.

Original Logo, Freestanding or Ground

Fist Place

Fabricator

Cunneen & Co.

Sydney, Australia

(62) 963-79400

Designer

Anne Gordon Design

Sydney, Australia

(62) 932-77811

Selling Price

$90,000

Located in a Sydney theme park, this sign identifies a retail arcade called Darling Walk. The 23-by-4.5-meter sign conveys a sense of fun and movement for client Sega Corp. by supporting each letter shape with individually fabricated "legs."

Small globes, recessed into the channel letters, lie flush with each letter’s acrylic surface to concentrate the light on the sign’s front during the day and achieve an edge-lit glow at night. A flashing system allows six special-effect lighting sequences per letter.

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Original Logo, Mounted or Projecting

First Place

Fabricator

National Sign Corp.

Seattle

(206) 282-0700

Designer

Ken Krumpos

National Sign Corp.

Selling Price

$30,000

The image of an authentic Thai temple adds flavor to Racha restaurant’s 9-by-4-foot illuminated dimensional wall sign. The full-color, large-format image, digitally corrected to fit the client’s color palette, was applied to an aluminum background shape and halo-lit with purple neon. Neon also illuminates the channel letters, which have purple returns and white acrylic faces. Routed copy is illuminated internally on the secondary copy band, made from painted purple acrylic.

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Existing Logo, Freestanding or Ground

First Place

Fabricator

Graphtec Inc.

Houston

(713) 690-9999

Designer

Kirk Baxter

Designage

Houston

(713) 520-6774

Selling Price

$23,000

One of three signs created to identify the Houston headquarters of Enron Corp., this 4-by-4-foot logo combines 1/8-inch and 1/16-inch stainless steel in three 5-inch diagonally mounted sections. The front 5-inch section features a seamless, polished, stainless-steel, reverse channel-letter logo with three neon colors and a sandblasted Lexan diffuser. The "NRO" letters are mounted on polished stainless-steel standoffs to flush out the face and provide a conduit for neon wiring. The sign itself comprises fabricated stainless steel with polished edges and a "non-directional" finish on the front and back. The sign unit, mounted on a 5-inch, square steel post, extends through the polished black-granite base and is suspended 2 inches over the granite base to achieve a floating effect. During the day, the contrasting stainless-steel finish provides a high-end architectural look. At night, the sign glows with three neon colors.

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Existing Logo, Mounted or Projecting

First Place

Fabricator

United Studios Sign Group

Longwood, FL

(407) 831-3484

Designer

Walt Disney Imagineering

Lake Buena Vista, FL

(407) 560-5459

Selling Price

$25,000

This design, created for Disney’s Magic Kingdom, updates one of the world’s most venerable logos. Fabricated of all-welded, multi-layered aluminum, and painted with two-part polyurethane enamels, this display is wall-mounted on a building housing Coca-Cola dispensing machines.

The sign’s star trail, sporting the Cool Ship letters, features an acrylic insert applied to its bottom surface. This allows neon lighting within the trail to illuminate downward as it moves in radius around the cabinet.

The center face is dome formed with an ultra-embossed Coca-Cola bottlecap. All logo elements are frisket cut and painted to include background, trail effects and highlights.

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Sign Systems

First Place

Fabricator

True Identity

Denver

(303) 321-5985

Independent Sign Co.

Denver

(303) 698-1574

Designer

Daniel King

True Identity

Daniel King, designer at Denver’s True Identity, developed this sign system based in part on ideas he gleaned from the hotel’s architects and interior designers. The result is a kind of village train station offering modern amenities mixed with Old World charm.

The freestanding directory cabinet, topped with a carved corona effect, features high-relief tile and a deep, rich, yellow base ragged-over with a warm-red color.

The projecting directory cabinet is fabricated from aluminum and accented with an oak finish. Continuing the solar motif is a custom-made bracket featuring a sun rendered from a Lawler stock casting.

The Plexiglas-acrylic-face restroom sign, mounted from the ceiling with a custom bracket, is finished with Textur-Lac spray.

The cashier sign, contained in an oak-accented aluminum cabinet, features Plexiglas letters mounted to an acrylic face. The bracket combines standard castings with custom effects.

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Digital Displays

First Place

Fabricator

Ad-Art Electric Sign Corp.

Stockton, CA

(209) 931-0860

Designer

Charles F. Barnard

Ad-Art Electric Sign Corp.

This display, created for the Rio Hotel/Casino in Las Vegas, was designed to be the largest full-color electronic sign in existence. Designed to attract freeway travelers, the sign rises 196 feet into the desert air. The 56-by-103-foot, double-face top showcases seven curved "blades" fashioned from fabricated metal and painted in flamboyant colors. Each blade features a matching grid neon that pulses with a chase lighting effect. The fill elements between the curved blades are painted violet and finished with polished gold aluminum. Superimposed raceways, featuring 25-watt lamps, 9 inches on-center, travel upward.

The sign’s signature "Rio" letters, measuring 22 feet high by 12 feet, 6 inches wide, are fabricated from white channel metal and accentuated by red borders and returns with clear red neon Edgelite. Illuminating the channel-letter faces are 25-watt clear lamps, which wipe on and off and scintillate. Additionally, the centers of the letter strokes feature single-row 50R-30 lamps, 10 inches on-center. These "script" on and off as part of an elaborate lighting animation sequence.

In the wedge-based electronic sign display, designers utilized a 280-by-560, 8-watt lamp matrix (that’s 39,200 pixels), for a grand total of 156,800 lamps. The back of the display features a single-face, interior-illuminated, flexible-face advertising sign to snare secondary traffic.

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Exposed Neon

First Place

Fabricator

Ultraneon Sign Co.

San Diego

(619) 569-6716

Designer

David Green

Ultraneon Sign Co.

This sign, created for the Universal Studio Store, incorporates peg-mounted channel letters with white neon on the faces and concealed yellow-gold behind the faces.

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Neon Art / Sculpture

First Place

Fabricator

Bill Buth

Neon Enterprises

West Allis, WI

(414) 475-5530

Designer

Bill Buth

Selling Price

$1,050

This question-mark dining table, designed for the designer’s home, incorporates 1-inch-thick wood discs with channels routed out for coated bromo-blue and emerald-green neon tubes. The table also features a glass top and an aluminum base.

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Neon Lighting / Graphics

First Place

Fabricator

Arthur Higgins,

Marsha Lidard,

Gaston Briones,

Dan Kesterson

Neon Knights Inc.

Baltimore

(410) 633-0233

Designer

Marsha Lidard

Actual movie reels were welded together, sandblasted and powder-coated for use in this neon project created for Premier Cinemas at BelAir. The neon intertwines through the reels of purple and pink 12mm glass, and Neonics special-effects transformers are used to slowly script on and off.

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Multi-Tenant / Main-ID

First Place

Fabricator

Image Works Inc.

Ashland, VA

(804) 798-5533

Designer

David Goodwin

Image Works Inc.

Selling Price

$40,000

Created for Sauer Properties Inc., this 19-by-10-foot V-shaped, main-ID sign consists of two single-face, multi-dimensional pylons that converge to share a steel upright support. Fabricated from aluminum, the sign’s "Libbie Place" letters are mounted to a "bowed-out" aluminum raceway, and the gridwork is aluminum square tube and flat aluminum cutouts. A polished granite base matches the building.