Alta Construction first contacted us earlier in the year because they were referred to us by one of our existing customers. They are a construction company that specializes in retail and commercial projects so it is common for them to require signage in a project. This particular project was a retail project for Space NK, a beauty retailer that started out in the United Kingdom and now has about 30 locations in the United States alone.
When it comes to retail locations, the storefront is the most important area for signage. The storefront is how you advertise to potential customers, help existing customers find your location, and convey information about your business. To be able to advertise day and night, they wanted a reverse-lit channel letter sign for the storefront. They also wanted to add a blade sign so those walking up to the business from the sidewalk could also find the location easily.
A reverse-lit channel letter sign is made by routing the faces of the letters from aluminum, forming the returns from aluminum coil, and welding the two together. For this sign we custom painted the aluminum. The back is made from clear Lexan which is a UL listed polycarbonate. The letters are hollow, and LEDs are installed inside of the letters. As you can see from some of the photos, the letters are mounted spaced off of the wall. We mount our reverse-lit channel letters with 1 1/2″ spacers so the LEDs have room to shine onto the wall behind the letters without creating any hotspots.
The blade sign is made from aluminum and is a double-sided sign. The aluminum was powder coated white along with the brackets used for mounting the sign onto the exterior wall. The letters were made from 1/4″ thick acrylic letters that were painted to match the channel letter signs.
Depending on the city, zone, sign type, and many different factors, it can take some time to pull a sign permit. Because of this, we also made a banner for them that they could put up after they opened while waiting for the permanent sign.