Design

1999 Electric Sign Design Competition

See this year’s contest winners

Published

18 years ago

March 28, 2006

Jacob Rieskamp Signs of the Times March 2006 Issue

Signs of the Times magazine conducts an annual electric sign design competition. This year’s contest received 203 entries and featured nine categories:

Judges for the contest were Ruth Britt, Hamilton, OH; Steve Brown, Lackner Signs, West Chester, OH; Dana Burton, City Lights Neon, Cincinnati; Gerald Holthaus, Holthaus Signs, Cincinnati; Jim Meyer, Ray Meyer Sign Co., Loveland, OH.

Signs of the Times publishes the contest results in its April issue; watch this spot for new winners posted each week!

Below is a list of First place winners, for each category. To view a full list of winners, purchase the April 1999 issue of Signs of the Times magazine here.

Original Logo, Freestanding or Ground

Fist Place

Fabricator

John Connor and Tommy Jarvis
United Studios Sign Group
Longwood, FL
(407) 831-3484

Designer

Bob Lee and Chad Harmon
United Studios Sign Group

Selling Price

$27,000

With a welded-aluminum cabinetry construction, this 12-foot-tall display has an 8-by-8-foot, multi-dimensional, reverse-lit logo incorporating the printer’s registration mark with the numeral “4.” Four perforated-metal, colored inserts recessed into the inner openings of the registration mark indicate process colors, and multi-colored neon illuminates the inserts from behind the outermost face. The outer back “4” element stands 2 inches away from the base cabinetry and is illuminated by recessed white neon. The “Four Graphics” copy in the angled, projecting support is waterjet-cut, 1/2-inch-thick, push-through white acrylic; the support is finished in royal blue to match the building accents and has “Nova” pearlescent highlights.

Original Logo, Mounted or Projecting

First Place

Fabricator

Federal Sign
Las Vegas
(702) 739-9466

Designer

Sue Deveny
Federal Sign

For the Blues Legends Hall of Fame at the Horseshoe Hotel & Casino, Federal Sign was charged with concocting a note-able identity that would be visually overwhelming. To meet the challenge, Federal fabricated a 28-foot saxophone with illuminated musical notes in clear-red neon mounted on a gold-finished raceway. Lamps indicating the musical lines chase out from the “sax” to simulate flowing music. The “Blues Legends” letters are box channel letters with exposed clear-red neon. The small cabinets down through the glass brick wall are low-relief sculptures of individual blues legends, halo-lit with white neon.

Existing Logo, Freestanding or Ground

First Place

Fabricator

Mikohn Lighting & Sign
Las Vegas
(702) 739-6789

Designer

Mikohn Lighting & Sign
Atlandia Design
Las Vegas

Selling Price

$2.5 million

Las Vegas’ recently built Bellagio Hotel and Casino has garnered critical attention for its much-hyped fine-arts gallery. To complement the casino’s artistic tendencies, Mikohn Lighting & Design fabricated this impression(istic)-able, double-faced, 200-foot-tall freestanding pylon, which incorporates an internally illuminated, flexible-face fabric display and a 12-foot-diameter, illuminated, flexible-face clock. The 16-foot-tall, halo-illuminated “Bellagio” letters are fabricated from steel.

The sign’s computer-decorated faces, which measure 51 feet high by 65 feet wide, are supplied by Metromedia Technologies, Los Angeles. Mikohn’s achievement is underscored by the project’s quick turnaround time. The sign had to be designed, engineered, permitted and constructed in less than 120 days.

Existing Logo, Mounted or Projecting

First Place

Fabricator

Mikohn Lighting & Sign
Las Vegas
(702) 739-6789

Designer

Roger Pratt and
Jack W. Larsen Jr.
Mikohn Lighting & Sign

Selling Price

$2 million

Two million bucks can buy a lot of peanuts, or, in this case, signage that symbolizes peanut M&Ms. Seems the folks at Ethel M Chocolates, located in Las Vegas’ Showcase Mall, felt the attention this sign attracts was well worth the expense. The entrance, fabricated in the shape of a heart, blends 3-D molded fiberglass finished with high-gloss metal-flake gold and a cover channel with indirect ruby-red lighting.

The ribbon-shaped marquee, composed of 3-D fiberglass, is painted with a satin finish. The reverse-channel molded-fiberglass letters, finished in goldleaf, are brightened by a ruby-red halo.

Constructed of 3-D fiberglass and painted with a high-gloss finish to perfectly match the widely recognized yellow package, the M&M’s bag serves as the sign’s centerpiece. The candy’s pan-channel logo letters stand 10 feet, 7 inches tall and are painted M&M brown. The letters, lit by 25-watt incandescent clear bulbs placed 6 inches on center, are accented by a single-stroke white neon outline. Animated grid neon simulates a shaking motion. The M&M pieces combine formed-plastic faces with internal neon illumination.

The supporting cast of M&M characters, painted high-gloss red, green and yellow, range in height from 15 1/2 feet to 18 feet, 9 inches. They’re constructed from 3-D fiberglass and are illuminated by directional flood lights.

Sign Systems

First Place

Fabricator

Designage Inc.
Apopka, FL
(407) 884-6600

Designer

Designage Inc.
Joe Drivas Photography
Longwood, FL
(407) 321-1969

Designed to guide guests through the new 16,000-square-foot Information Center at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, this sign system blasts off with an 8-by-54-foot halo that combines a Durst Lambda photoprint and blue neon. Five 3-by-10-foot oval, illuminated, routed signs with push-through graphics and |2412|^® swirled aluminum decorate the faces. To allow flexibility in relocating or adding new signs, cabinets are mounted to a five-row aluminum pipe raceway. The 8-by-8-foot, freestanding “Shuttle Status” wall consists of two Prolite^® LED displays, which track upcoming launches and landings.

Finally, the “Space Shop” sign is fabricated with cut-out acrylic letters mounted to a sculpted, high-density foam, perforated-aluminum panel, stainless-steel bars and a mounting plate.

Digital Displays

First Place

Fabricator

Mikohn Lighting & Sign
Las Vegas
(702) 739-6789

Designer

Jack M. Larsen Jr.
Mikohn Lighting & Sign

Selling Price

$4 million

In most deserts, mirages lure travelers with visions of swaying palm trees, fresh water and undulating belly dancers. But in Las Vegas, the mirages are made of neon and massive digital displays that promote headliners like stand-up comedian Jackie Mason. The Sahara Hotel & Casino shelled out big bucks for this MikohnVision electronic board. Measuring 30 feet high and 48 feet wide, the EMC features a full-color, 224-by-376 pixel matrix.

Above the message board, 15-foot-tall camels support a texcote-finished castle crowned by a high-gloss gold minaret.

Exposed Neon

First Place

Fabricator

Superior Electrical Adv. Inc.
Long Beach, CA
(562) 495-3808

Designer

Miguel Rieman
Superior Electrical Adv. Inc.

Produced for an Aliso Viejo, CA-based cinema, this interior, exposed-neon sign features aluminum panels with curved neon accents. The letters in “Edwards” incorporate aluminum, Alliance metal and exposed, double-tube, clear red neon. These letters are installed on a curved, aluminum, tube-like structure. Dimmer lighting is used on the theater’s lower levels.

Neon Art, Sculpture, Lighting and Graphics

First Place

Fabricator

Roger Daniels
C.R. Glow
Stockton, CA
(209) 982-7801

Designer

Randall Whitehead,
Randall Whitehead Intl.
San Francisco
(415) 626-1277

Melanie Daniells
C.R. Glow

Selling Price

$5,000

Standing 5 feet tall, this sculpture is constructed from 1/2-inch clear Plexiglas^® acrylic with hand-polished edges. Each “ice cube” measures 15 inches square. The first surface, made from 15-millimeter clear glass, is pumped with krypton gas to create a traveling-bubble effect. 3M film is used to produce the second surface’s sandblasted appearance. The 15-millimeter Supro Bromo blue glass is blown out and pumped with argon and mercury.

A black-acrylic box with a brushed-aluminum top serves as the sculpture’s base. The box harbors a 7530 transformer and 20-pound weight.

Multi-Tenant / Main-ID

First Place

Fabricator

Superior Sign Systems
Vacaville, CA
(707) 449-8111

Designer

Sid Aslami
Superior Sign Systems

Selling Price

$510,000

To create the 29-by-55-foot double-sided pylons and the 20-by-32-foot four-sided pylon shown here, Superior Sign Systems employed three primary ingredients: .125 aluminum, McNichols’ perforated .125 aluminum and Wrisco’s black-anodized aluminum. The pan-channel letters in “Bridgepointe” contain 3/16-inch yellow, Acrylite acrylic faces mounted on an illuminated, curved, perforated panel. The perforated panel is backed with black/white acrylic and illuminated with H.O. fluorescent tubing. Steel tubes — measuring 2 by 8 inches with 1 1/2-by-4-inch, steel-channel overlays — are used to produce the horizontal bars between the tenant panels.Chemetal

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