Design

Best Commercial Monument Signs of 2015

Solid as a rock

Published

9 years ago

April 1, 2015

Steve Aust Signs of the Times April 2015 Issue

Commercial Monument Signs

FIRST PLACE
Fabricator/Designer/Installer
Brad Hominick Productions Ltd.
Thunder Bay, ON, Canada
(807) 626-3823
www.bhpsigns.com

Co-Fabricator
Gemini Canada
Neustadt, ON, Canada
(800) 265-0426
www.signletters.com

Co-Designer (concept)
Firedog Communications
Thunder Bay
(807) 767-4443
www.firedogpr.com

A former billboard painter for CBS Outdoor, Hominick, now a self-employed fabricator, masterfully poured his creative energy into this monument sign that proudly identifies Nipigon, ON, a community of 1,700 where fishing on Lake Superior and the Nipigon River provides both vocation and recreation for many.

Hominick hired a structural engineer to design the tubular-metal support structure, which he MIG-welded to form, and the sign’s concrete footings. For the sign’s base, Hominick built the structure from 3-in.-thick Douglas fir using a circular saw, bandsaw, jigsaw, reciprocating saw and planer. He joined the pieces with self-tapping bolts. He outsourced 3-D-element fabrication to Gemini, which built the fish from 3/8-in.-thick aluminum and fashioned the Nipigon logo and slogan from ½-in.-thick acrylic. Donaldson Ropes provided the netting, and Nichols Contracting furnished the landscaping rocks.

SECOND PLACE
Fabricator/Designer/Installer
Brother Zank
Custom Craftsman Signs
Sevierville, TN
(865) 429-1934
www.customcraftsmansigns.com

Client
City of Pigeon Forge

Originally, city officials wanted this sign to be crafted from reclaimed barnwood; for easy maintenance and optimal durability, they ultimately agreed to use Trex composite-decking material. Zank fabricated all graphic elements using Sign Arts Products’ Sign*Foam®4 HDU. The main copy was saw-cut and carved; the secondary text was “wiggle sawed” and round-carved. The secondary logo panel was bonded together 5 in. thick over 2-in. steel tubing. Miller Iron Works produced the embedded steel, and Fred Frische shaped a few pieces with a ShopBot CNC router.

THIRD PLACE
Fabricator/Designer
Danthonia Designs
Elsmore, NSW, Australia
(800) 781-8757 (US number)
www.danthoniadesigns.com

Client
Mackay Regional Council

The governing council of this Queensland community wanted a distinctive entry statement; as usual, Danthonia delivered. The monument has an aluminum-post structure under an expanded-polyurethane foam (EPS) that’s processed with a hot-wire cutter and polyurea-coated for a hammer-proof finish. Danthonia hand-sculpted the sugarcane and other details from laminated Sign*Foam 3 HDU using Pfeil chisels and applied artwork and letters with 3M adhesives. A Roland CAMM-1 plotter generated the paint masks; artistic elements were handpainted. Dulux Weathershield paints and a Graffiti Buster 200 topcoat will protect the monument from weather and vandals for years to come.

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