A new pizza restaurant was opening up on Melrose, and the owners were looking for a sign company to make their storefront sign in time for the grand opening. Ghost Pizza Kitchen found us online and reached out to us for a quote. As we were not in their immediate area, we utilized online resources to determine the size of their storefront and the size of the existing sign so we could quote them for a new sign. Permit information is public so we are able to go through old records to find the information we need. The total sign area that a business is allowed to have is based on its location and building frontage, which is why this information is important.
Once we were able to determine the allowed size, we were able to start on the sign design for the quote. The original plan was to make everything reverse-lit channel letters, but during quoting we found that “PIZZA KITCHEN” was going to be too small to make into channel letters. Channel letters need to have a certain stroke so we can fabricate the returns, and also to make sure that LEDs will fit behind the letters. We made “PIZZA KITCHEN’ as large as we could, but the strokes were still too thin so we decided to make them into non-illuminated dimensional letters.
After Ghost Pizza Kitchen decided to go with us as their sign vendor, we went out to their location for a full site survey. There, we found that we did not have electricity access from behind the sign area so we would need a raceway. A raceway is a metal box that goes behind the channel letters to house all of the electrical components. Since these are reverse-lit channel letters, the raceway needed to be at least the size of the sign so the lighting wouldn’t be uneven. To help the raceway blend into the storefront as much as possible, we painted it the same color. Although this was not in our original plan, we were able to make it work and provide Ghost Pizza Kitchen with an amazing sign right in time for their grand opening.