Design

Blackout Signs Decks Out the Lucky and the Kingly With Distinctive Neon Signage

Don’t mess with Texas signage

Published

8 years ago

June 15, 2016

Steve Aust Signs of the Times June 2016 Issue

Blackout Signs, a San Marcos, TX-based fabricator of distinctive, mostly neon-lit, signage for businesses that seek signature identities. Here’s a round-up of some of their work.

Lucky Lou’s

Lucky Lou’s, a Denton, TX sports bar, captivates viewers with a custom-built, “dice-rolling” sign. A custom controller built by West Coast Custom Designs flashes eight dice-roll combinations that scintillate incandescent bulbs. Blackout Signs (San Marcos, TX) hand-sculpted the name and dice from PresicionBoard HDU, with layers laminated together and coated with StyroSpray 1000 polyurea hardcoat to create a porcelain-like appearance. Blackout’s Jay Gordon built the frame from aluminum square tube from .080-gauge faces with .063 returns. Coating the sign entailed application of 1Shot® enamels with a DeVilbiss paint gun and Mack brushes. Action Lighting (Bozeman, MT) provided incandescent “carnival” bulbs, and Big Dog Neon (Lockhart, TX) formed the neon tubing.

East Side Kings

East Side Kings Thai-Kun, a food truck that serves Asian tapas around Austin, gained fame as one of Bon Appetit’s Hot 10 list for America’s best new restaurants – and was the only mobile eatery to make the list. Proprietors Thai Changthong, Paul Qui and Moto Utsunomiya set up a bricks-and-mortar restaurant adjacent to Whisler’s, a popular Austin watering hole. They hired Blackout Signs to fabricate the sign; the shop collaborated with Weiss Architecture and artist Peelander Yellow to design the sign. It combines a handpainted dragon body, a rotating panel in the dragon’s mouth with English and Thai characters, and a neon-illuminated head. The neon sign comprises an aluminum frame built from 2 x 1-in., aluminum square tube. The shop attached rivets to the hand-formed, .063-gauge returns, which were adhered with 3M’s panel-bonding adhesive to .080-gauge faces. Yellow painted the mural, and Blackout proprietor Jay Gordon and his crew handled sign design, fabrication and installation in-house, with the exception of Big Dog Neon’s Kurt Tunningsley, who bent the neon tubing.

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