The Kensington is an assisted living and memory care residence that just opened in Redondo Beach in the summer of 2019. The owners reached out to us earlier in the year when they were still in the middle of construction. The community takes up about half of a block and spans across Knob Hill Avenue and Avenue A on the Pacific Coast Highway. As the property has two corners in intersections, they were planning to build two monument signs; one for the corner of PCH and Knob Hill, and the second one at the corner of PCH and Avenue A. The signs were to be identical and display the name of the community. The sign design went through a lot of changes as construction progressed, but the final design we ended on was a set of oxidized bronze dimensional letters with the “K” painted a designated gold. In the beginning, we were considering having an internally illuminated sign with black reverse-lit acrylic letters. After seeing a few different mockups, changing the wording, and deciding to have uplighting instead of the sign itself lighting up, we ended with the sign you see in the photos for both monument signs.
While we were working on this set of signs, we also started working on two smaller signs for the entrances on Avenue A and Knob Hill. One was for the regular resident and guest parking and another was to make sure that passenger vehicles didn’t enter that way. These signs were designed after the monument sign letters so they also use oxidized bronze and painted gold aluminum letters. The “Delivery Entrance Only” sign also has a line painted in a burgundy paint color to emphasize the fact that that passenger vehicles aren’t allowed. These letters were also made of thinner material, 1/4″ thick, as opposed to the 1/2″ thick material used for the monument sign letters due to the difference in size. For comparison, the “K” in the smaller signs were around 9″ tall while the “K” in the larger signs were 29″ tall.