Don Bell Signs Produces Art-ful Signage for Orlando Lifestyle Center

Here’s yet another example of shopping centers’ evolution since their Spartan roots, when they began filling the suburban landscape on a grand scale in the 1970s. Bland, fluorescent-lit cabinets have given way to colorful design, bold typefaces and greater luminescence.

Artegon Market in Orlando, which competes with a bevy of entertainment destinations, faces an even greater expectation of wow factor. The property manager, Paragon Outlets, hired Don Bell Signs LLC (Port Orange, FL) to develop an eye-catching sign program to brand the retail campus. David Granger, a designer for Tampa-based 3D Studios LLC, laid out the program.

Don Bell Signs production designers Chris Panariti and Mark De Bolt completed the design process using a suite of CorelDRAW, Adobe Illustrator, SA Intl.’s FlexiSign and Trimble’s SketchUp software.

The horizontal, point-of-entry logo cabinet features a painted, aluminum-tube frame mounted to aluminum-tube supports, secured with a corrugated-steel backdrop, and outfitted with pan-formed acrylic that features embossed copy covered with first-surface 3M translucent vinyl and second-surface diffuser film. Layers of internal, backlighting and frontlighting LEDs wash the sign with light. TexCote’s medium-grit texture coating provide greater depth for the cabinets. The channel letters rise above the cabinet, and are secured to aluminum I-beams. Vertical, main-ID pylons were similarly constructed.

The Artegon glass-wall façade features 12-ft.-tall channel letters constructed with aluminum-tube-frame brackets and illuminated with exposed FEIT Electric LED bulbs.