We had made new sign faces for West Valley Optometry several years ago, and they reached out to us again recently to have them updated. The last time we made the sign faces, we digitally printed the artwork to match the logo colors in the artwork. This time, we decided to use pre-colored translucent vinyl for longevity. The reason we used translucent vinyl is that the signs light up at nighttime so the vinyl needs to be translucent so the colors can be seen. Logo colors are very important in branding so we took a lot of the time with the client to sit down with different vinyl books and choose the colors that they thought would be best to represent their logo.
There are three different colors of vinyl used for all of the signs. For the two box sign faces, we cut Tuf Glas faces to match the size of the box sign openings and the vinyl was applied to the Tuf Glas. Tuf Glas is a UL listed polycarbonate that we use for sign faces. We use Tuf Glas as opposed to acrylic because it is less shatter-proof, and it comes in large rolls so we can make larger sign faces without having to have a seam. Acrylic comes in 4′ x 8′ sheets so if a sign face was 5’x 10′, we would need two sheets to make it and there would be a seam in the middle.
The third sign we updated the face for was a standoff sign that was mounted to the exterior wall at the same level as the windows. This was not an illuminated sign so we used sibond which is a polycarbonate sandwiched between two sheets of aluminum. We used white sibond where the aluminum is painted white, and the same vinyl colors were applied for the logo. Signs that are mounted with standoffs are very easy to switch out as long as you make sure that the holes on the new sign match up with the holes on the existing sign.