SignWeb | signweb.com

(January 2012) posted on Fri Jan 06, 2012

An exterior sign and interior digital graphics provide unique flavor for the eatery.

By Steve Thomas Greer

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Last year, Nelson Lang, founder of the Pita Pit chain that’s popular in many college towns, contacted me about needing signage for a dif-ferent restaurant concept. His sister-in-law, Annette Zupancic, was opening a quick-service Mexican restaurant in Oshawa, ON. The restaurant was christened Jimmy Guaco’s. Lang and Zupancic wanted me to create an original logo that evoked a sense of fun for visitors.

Curb appeal
Using Corel Painter, I created a stylized depiction of a smiling vaquero, complete with sombrero and serape, using Corel Painter 10, and I designed and set the text with CorelDraw 14. I’ve always worked with Corel software, and I’m comfortable with these products.

A pub previously existed at this location, but, given its very bland, bare exterior, I wasn’t surprised it failed. Oshawa’s sign codes only allowed a sign to protrude 6 in. from the building. However, I was able to circumvent this regulation by creating an aluminum awning substructure (from 1 x 1-in.-sq., aluminum tube) to support the sign; lag bolts affix it to the wall. We designed the structure in-house, but I had a structural engineer sign off on my hardware rendering to verify the support would be strong enough to fasten the sign to it. The façade is covered with reclaimed, corrugated-metal or barn-wall flashing, which I obtained from Vic West Steel.

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To create the metal backdrop, we MIG-welded the components. Using our MultiCam 1000 CNC router, we fashioned the channel-letter returns from 0.063-in.-thick aluminum. On the primary, routed text, we covered the faces with Interstate Plastics’ 2447 extruded acrylic as a second surface. The bottom cabinet was also CNC-routed.

The secondary text, “Original Bordertown Burritos,” received a second-surface acrylic – this face was CNC-routed using Interstate Plastics’ 2447 acrylic, and decorated with Avery Graphics’ 800 translucent, cast vinyl. The cabinet also served as a secondary raceway for the sign’s wiring. The signs are backlit with US LED white LEDs. A 110V power supply was sufficient for the sign; the LED modules only drew 0.08A of power apiece.

We primed the channel-letter cans with Akzo Nobel’s wash primer, and painted the interior with Akzo Nobel’s Grip-Gard white to optimize brightness. On the cans’ exteriors, we applied Modern Masters’ metal-oxide paint, which quickly provided a copper-colored, rust patina, which suggested the sign had seared in the hot Mexican sun.