Check out these close-up photos of a lobby sign we recently made for Sweet Smiles, an orthodontist’s office in Garden Grove, California. They contacted us for a custom sign of their logo for their office to brighten the room, and to make a great first impression on patients.
The client wanted individual letters. Due to the many different colors incorporated in the logo, the best choice of material was acrylic. For dimensional letters that are going to be a non-metallic color, out first choice is usually acrylic. When we need to match specific logo colors, getting a vector file version of the logo from the customer is very important. The logo designer will have the Pantone colors called out in the logo file which we can use to determine what paint color to use.
“sweet smiles” was routed from 3/8″ acrylic and “modern orthodontics” was routed from 1/4″ acrylic before they were painted. The thinner the stroke and smaller the size of the letters, we like to use a thinner material. This is to prevent the letters from looking too bulky. Alternatively, the larger letters are, the thicker the material to prevent the letters or logo from being too fragile.
The “wave” logo incorporated a few different colors and an overlay effect. We could have painted this piece also, however, it would have been a very long process as sections of the logo would need to be masked for each color. To make sure that the colors matched exactly, we decided to lay a digital print on the acrylic. If this were an outdoor sign, we would have either painted it or used pre-colored translucent vinyl to try to match the color because digital prints do not hold up well outdoors. But since this was an interior sign, we decided on a digital print. From the side photo, you can see that the base acrylic we used was white. Instead of using one of the colors from the logo, we decided on a neutral color that would match the wall so it would blend in well with the wall and the rest of the sign.