De Silva Brothers & Company found us online after they were looking for a sign company to make them a few signs for their building in Pico Rivera. As you can see from the photos, we made them channel letter signs. You can easily distinguish a channel letter sign from a dimensional letter sign because channel letter signs are much thicker, and you can usually see the trimcap around the face, although trim-less letters are becoming more popular recently. Our dimensional letters usually range between 3/8″ and 1 1/2″ thick for exterior signs but once you get up in thickness, the material can get very expensive so we recommend just switching to 1″ or 1 1/2″ deep channel letters.
Our front-lit channel letters are usually 5″ deep, but these signs were not illuminated so they were 3″ deep. The reason we make illuminated front channel letters 5″ deep is so the LEDs are not too close to the face where you can see the hotspots but not too far away that the lighting is not even. With these signs, the goal was depth so 3″ was good for letters that were between 3-4′ tall.
Whether you need a sign to light up at night time, include a lot of artwork, or be painted a certain color, channel letters are a great option. Front channel letters have translucent faces so when they’re internally illuminated, the faces light up. You can have different colors using different translucent acrylic and translucent vinyl, or by digitally printing artwork onto translucent vinyl. Reverse channel letters are either a metal finish or painted. The backs are clear and the rest of the letters are solid metal so the light comes out the back when internally illuminated. Reverse-lit channel letters are perfect for lettering or shapes that don’t need to have a specific color because, at nighttime, the main focus will be the lighting. If you want something with artwork on the face to be reverse-lit, we can also do compound channel letters which are both front-lit and reverse-lit.