2007 International Sign Contest

FIRST PLACE

This coffeeshop needed an a-peeling awning to attract customers, and Plummer happily obliged. To cover the café’s existing graphics, he decorated 3½- x 16-ft. Dibond® aluminum-composite material with airbrushed graphics using 1Shot® lettering enamels and an Iwata Eclipse airbrush. Plummer developed the background colors using Matthews satin-finish, low-VOC, acrylic-polyurethane paint. To protect his designs, he applied automotive-grade, polyurethane clear. When the client proposed using a lemon as the awning’s central graphic, Plummer developed a sketch of a lemon he peeled and transferred onto a pounce pattern. He quipped, “How old school is that?” To attach the new awning decoration, Plummer screwed through the canvas’ face into the underlying, steel framework. Because of Dibond’s thinness and rigidity, Plummer said the graphic appears painted on the canvas.

SECOND PLACE

As fuel costs soar – along with many expenses that strain family budgets – and highways teem with vehicles, mass transit becomes a more viable transportation solution. With this in mind, the Transportation Authority’s inhouse design team partnered with AAA Flag & Banner to develop diverse banner campaigns. The projects comprised an overhanging, three-banner system to greet Metro’s 3,000 headquarters employees, which AAA printed on 54 x 14-in. sections of scrim material; a 44 x 22-ft., mega-format, temporary wall covering that extols mass transit’s virtues; and blockout-material banners that promote the company’s Orange Line system. AAA output all systems on its EFI-Vutek 3360 solvent-ink printer with Ultraflex vinyl.

THIRD PLACE

If you get a bigger rush from a snowmobile ride than four shots of espresso, you might be a sledneck (sorry, Jeff Foxworthy). The winter-apparel maker, which sponsored an extreme-sports competition, hired bluemedia to develop a mesh skirt for a 238-ft., snowmobile jump ramp – the longest such ramp on record, according to the company. Bluemedia developed the graphics in Adobe Photoshop® and Illustrator® and output material sections on its Scitex solvent-ink printer.