Timber Signs Scoops Out Identity for German Ice-Cream Shop

Few things evoke childhood memories more than an ice cream cone on a warm day. In business since 1972, Berg im Spreewald, Germany’s Urban’s Café, has provided multiple generations of families with the same,comforting satisfaction. According to Urban’s website (and Google’s translation), the shop makes its ice cream on the premises without artificial ingredients. So, naturally, second-generation owners Renè and Jördis Urban would wish for a sign that conveyed an organic quality.

They hired Timber Signs (Ofterschwang, Germany) to build the sign program, which includes a protruding, bracket-mounted sign with a luscious-looking, king-size scoop; a wall-mounted sign with the shop’s verdant logo, and a blackboard sign that lists the shop’s 24 available flavors.

The 6 x 6-ft., bracket sign features primary copy shaped from Duna Industries’ DunaFoam HDU on a Gerber Sabre 408 CNC router, with secondary copy fashioned with a round-over bit and secondary, V-carved copy. Timber Signs’ Manfred Didier and Marcus Goebels painted and carved the coffee beans and leaf over the “U”, by hand, and the wooden beams were built from brushed and stained HDU. They glued the sign panels together and screwed them to a galvanized-metal frame. The scoops of ice cream comprise self-expanding, spray-on urethane, which Goebels and Didier cut with knives, fortified with West Systems two-part epoxy and coated with acrylic paint and glaze.

They sandblasted the urethane ice-cream cone with rabbit-fence material as a grain frame, and enveloped it in a stainless-steel bracket. Timber Signs fabricated the wall-mounted sign, which measures 5 x 5 ft., similarly to the projecting sign. The 2 x 6-ft., blackboard sign features a V-carved logo that complements the stud-mounted, writable surface.

Timber Signs prepared gilded elements with Lefranc Charbonnel slow size and Noris goldleaf.