Benchmarks

5 Office Park Signs Welcoming Workers Back

THE PANDEMIC MADE ghost towns of many, but office park signs are back, directing employees and visitors to which companies are where. Following are five designations of various types and styles for professional building sets.

Architectural Monument

The new sign for East Shore Business Park (La Porte, IN) was designed with the architecture of the building in mind, says Legacy Sign Group’s (Westville, IN) Marketing Coordinator Megan Swick. The shop’s fabricators used a CIDAN CNC Metal Folder, AXYZ CNC Router and acrylic flat cut out (FCO) elements. For the background, they direct-printed ACM with a wood-grain graphic. The aluminum tenant panels have vinyl copy and graphics with a cultured stone veneer base. Fabrication required three weeks and installation took one, for which Legacy’s team used an Altec Digger Derricks truck.

Sign of Land

To reflect the civil and environmental engineering consulting, landscape architecture and land surveying specialties of client Environmental Design Partnership (EDP; Clifton Park, NY), AJ Sign Co. (Burnt Hills, NY) crafted a multi-tenant monument with reverse-lit LED channel letters mounted on a rustic and environmentally friendly wood alternative material. To complete this project, says AJ Sign’s Director of Marketing Tim Szablewski, the designers used SAi Flexi, Gerber OMEGA, Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, while fabricators and installers put the shop’s MultiCam Apex3R CNC router, Roland TrueVIS VG2-640 printer/cutter and Elliott L60 Boom Truck to use.

Team Endeavor

JC Signs & Graphics (Clear Lake, MN) designed and installed this sign for Lakewood Health Systems in Staples, MN. After presenting four design options provided by Minneapolis-based firm The Sign Producers, JC Signs & Graphics fabricated the monument with an assist from Ed’s Signs (Sauk Rapids, MN) spec’ing the same steel siding used on the building and ¾-in. acrylic push-through letters, backlit by Principal Industries LEDs. “The main monument was a unique sign all the way around. That made it fun to fabricate,” says James Cota, JC Signs’ owner.

Puzzle Pieces

For their new facility, Sunshine Fuels & Energy (Bristol, RI) contacted local signshop Hill House Graphics. The logo was created from ¾-in. PVC cut on a CNC router. The shop recessed a ⅜-in. channel for LED backlighting. The yellow and black on the sign are vinyl, with the red letters CNC-cut PVC, painted with a high-gloss automotive clear coat. The process took three weeks. “The biggest challenges on this project came in the design stage, as there were so many unique pieces to this puzzle that had to be worked out,” says Ian McLellan, Hill House’s owner.

Rusty or Rustic?

Atchley Graphics (Columbus, OH) created this sign for long-standing friend Lakeside Forest in neighboring Westerville, OH. The primary panel and secondary logo were cut by a fiber laser. The panel of Corten steel at the top that’s meant to rust was brushed silver, which contrasted a sheet of DiBond cut on Atchley Graphics’ Summa F1832. The logo was laser-cut from ⅛-in.-thick, powder-coated steel. “There were multiple ‘cooks in the kitchen,’ which led to some unanticipated bottlenecks,” says Derek Atchley, the shop’s owner. The choice of Corten confused clients initially as well, resulting in some “interesting phone calls.”