With its first location established in London in 1971 by Americans Isaac Tigret and Peter Morton, the Hard Rock Café brand has expanded far and wide from Honolulu to Hong Kong. A Hard Rock Café location recently opened in Guatemala City. Whereas some Hard Rock locations feature somewhat understated signage, Distec (Guatemala City) took a much more creative direction with a 40-ft.-tall, border-lit, freestanding guitar and other signage and architectural elements throughout. Alfredo Angel, the president of Distec, a four-year-old sign fabricator that works throughout Central America, had worked with the Guatemala City franchisee for other sign projects.
The guitar shines after dark with approximately 400 linear ft. of SloanLED’s Flexibrite border-tubing product. The shop formed the aluminum components on its MultiCam CNC router, and installers secured the sign to the steel support structure with a 20-ton boom crane. Main-entrance logos also feature flexible-LED illumination; façade logos and other signage featured Permlight for Signs modules.
Other key elements include a backstage wall that comprises approximately 3,000 aluminum tubes, which form two guitars LED-illuminated and decorated with 3M Di-Noc day/night, architectural-graphic media; and red-LED-lit, acrylic boxes installed over the bar that showcase an array of guitars.
And, as always, rapid turnaround was required: Angel noted they had just two months from quote to completion to execute the job.