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Business Management

Best Commercial Building Signs of 2012

These signs accentuate the positive of the built environment.

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First Place
Fabricator
Bernhardt Signs
Ottawa, ON, Canada
(613) 836-7817
www.bernhardtsigns.ca

Designer
Doug Bernhardt

Client
The Irish Village and Peter Devine’s

Such elegant, festive façade signage would tempt even a teetotaler to go inside and raise a pint of Harp or Guinness. After having created a charcoal-and-pencil pattern, Bernhardt fashioned the panels from solid mahogany, which he shaped with a handheld router. The sign measures approximately 3 x 30 ft., and he secured it to the wall with screws and a standard, aluminum mounting bracket and Hilti fasteners. Bernhardt decorated the panels with Sikkens Cetol wood stain, 1Shot® lettering enamel and 23K goldleaf.

Second Place
Fabricator
Signs of Gold
Williamsville, NY
(716) 688-5359
www.signsofgold.com

Designer
Francis Lestingi
Signs of Gold

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Client
Hart Hotels

People may associate Holiday Inn signage with a monolithic, green hue, but Lestingi bucked that staid image for Hart Hotels, which operates a Holiday Inn in downtown Buffalo, with these elegant signs for two onsite eateries. He and his son, Stephen, incise-carved the solid-mahogany panel on the Bin 620 sign, added 1Shot lettering enamels and 23k goldleaf, and installed it with a French-cleat system. The letters and numerals on both signs were built from 1¾-in.-thick HDU with power tools and chisels, and decorated with 23K goldleaf. They’re backed with ½-in.-thick, HDU panels installed in the wall with hanger-bolt studs.

Third Place
Fabricator
Great American Sign Co.
Basking Ridge, NJ
(908) 630-9120
www.greatamericansign.net

Designer
Gary Johnson
Great American Sign Co.

Client
Self

Except for possibly a glowing referral, there’s no better sales pitch for a signmaker than his showroom. Johnson designed this wall-mounted sign using Gerber Omega® 2.6 and SA Intl.’s EnRoute® 4 3-D software. To showcase his array of material choices and techniques, Johnson hand-cut and polished brass lettering, and carved the HDU panel on his Gerber Dimension 200 CNC router. Then, Johnson decorated the panel with a faux-woodgrain finish, 23K gold and variegated leaf over the prismatic-cut letters, and a Gorilla Glue stipple finish to accentuate the panel. He fashioned the self-portrait and dog from Abracadabra Magic Sculpt epoxy putty, acrylic and aluminum foil. The tools were also fabricated from Magic Sculpt.
 

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