Design

2009 International Sign Contest: Commercial Sign Systems

A gallery of the category’s winners

Published

15 years ago

March 26, 2009

Steve Aust Signs of the Times March 2009 Issue

FIRST PLACE

Beantown’s Battery Wharf Development features a building identification, wayfinding and historical markers. DCL built the approximately 400 wayfinding signs from chemically etched zinc and raised, brushed letters. Fabricators also fashioned the seven, interpretive-history panels with Winsor Fireform’s four-color, photographic, porcelain-enamel informational plaques and painted-aluminum frames.

Fabricators conically formed the three site pylons – with a ribbed substructure and a 3/16-in., brake-formed skin — to resemble ocean buoys and installed four-color, porcelain-enamel maps and interpretive graphics. Each pylon features custom-painted aluminum wind chimes, which the shop tuned to strike a seventh-chord, C-major note when ocean breezes blow.

SECOND PLACE

L + H built this program for the Please Touch Museum, a 33-year-old, Philadelphia-based children’s museum that emphasizes interactive learning. According to Scott Long, L + H’s creative director, the playful depictions of the stick figures and circular structures vary from 8 x 8 ft. to 10 x 15 ft. The shop designs the wayfinding program with SA International Flexi® software and fabricated using CNC-routed, 0.125- and 0.080-in. aluminum coated with Matthews acrylic-polyurethane paint and an anti-graffiti coating.

THIRD PLACE

A desert’s indigenous color palette, flora and fauna provided ample inspiration for the Phoenix-based Desert Botanical Garden’s distinctive environmental graphics. After having delved into the Garden’s photo archive, JRC formulated the program’s design using Adobe® Illustrator® with a CADTools plug-in. Airpark fabricated routed-aluminum panels coated with Matthews Paint acrylic-polyurethane paint and decorated them with inkjet-printed, 3M Graphics Market Center vinyl faces before attaching them to rusted-steel posts. Cherrill said more than 50 signs have been installed, and approximately 50 more will be included during a future phase.

HONORABLE MENTION

HONORABLE MENTION

Related Topics:Design February 2009 March 2009

click to Comment(Comment)

Up Next

2009 International Sign Contest: Murals

Don't Miss

Instant Signs USA Safety-Sign CD

Introducing the Sign Industry Podcast

The Sign Industry Podcast is a platform for every sign person out there — from the old-timers who bent neon and hand-lettered boats to those venturing into new technologies — we want to get their stories out for everyone to hear. Come join us and listen to stories, learn tricks or techniques, and get insights of what’s to come. We are the world’s second oldest profession. The folks who started the world’s oldest profession needed a sign.