AQUA - seafood restaurant & bar

Completed

The letters are cut out and/or carved in 3D on a cnc router. You can see each path of the router bit showing up like a topo map. They very much resemble sandblasted wood. The material is high density urethane foam (HDU) and started at 4' x 8' x 2" thick. Morris Coville at HyTek Plastics and I designed the 3D dimensions on his software.

The material is a very hard foam. It shapes and sands very easy, much like a surf board. No matter how much you sand it, you still have coarse open bubbles. The manufacturer makes a thick (like yogurt) high build water based primer. After 2 coats you can wet sand and get a very smooth surface. The letter above is ready for a base coat of blue-green enamel.

Here's my wife and best shop assistant, Jana, brushing on paint. Look at how fast she goes.

A row of letters drying. They get lightly sanded again to remove micro garbage in the paint surface that seems to kinda just fall out of the sky.

5 hues of blue-green mixed and ready to be sprayed on.

I shot the middle shade above (3rd) over the whole letter. Then shot the 2nd and 4th from opposing diagonals at about a 45 degree angle. Last, I shot the 1st and 5th from opposing diagonals, spraying straight sideways (horizontal).

All the white parts were cnc router cut from a 3mm sheet of 'Alupanel', a pre-finished aluminum clad plastic core panel. I'm adhering the letters to the black background with 3M VHB tape and silicone. Hopefully one holds if the other fails.

A disposable low tack stencil for spacing the letters is applied. I give the letters a 1/10" outline and cut just the outline on my plotter. Nice dog pile of letters ready to go on.

No need to do the letter centers.

The letters are big and heavy enough that I'm using mechanical fasteners along with adhesive. There's a plastic drywall anchor screwed into the back of the letter, an extra one to the left showing what it is, and a stainless screw that comes in from behind the 2 background layers.

Very cool paint overspray left over on my 2x4 drying rack. This ain't Photoshop. I love it!!

Beto (Robert Sattell) is awesome! He's helped me on many installs. When I work with him, I get to hold the dummy end. This is his wonderful scaffold.

A bit of a close up. Notice the diagonal gradiants. The shwoosh on the A's and Q's is higher than the rest so as to appear to cross over the top of the down stroke on the A.

Two of these were made, one for each side of the corner. The next fun thing is the opposing diagonal gradients. The light source for the left sign is top left; for the right sign is top right. It makes for a subtle realism.

Each year the Downtown Corvallis Association gives out Design Awards at the last DCA After Hours which takes place in December. For the year 2008, Aqua won for the Exterior Signage category. Yeehaw!!

There's a photo of this job in the design gallery at Letterhead Fonts.