We always appreciate when our customers are just so over-the-top happy with our work. Their excitement renews ours for the work we do daily. Last week we completed a neat project for one of those customers.
We were putting the final touches on a sign that was destined for Janet’s Antiques in downtown St. Petersburg. The sign was a highly custom piece that included digital prints, vinyl, and some bright neon. It had a fun design that was inspired by the antique shops own in house “Price Fairy.” What is the Price Fairy you ask? We’ll, the owner of the antique shop carries a wand that lights up, and whenever she needs to negotiate pricing with one of her customers, she waves the wand over the item. For her, it is an effective strategy that seems to take the edge off of the negotiation and makes it fun for both her and her customers.
With such a highly custom sign and its goals (attracting new customers, increasing her brand awareness) in mind, there were a few challenges to overcome along the way.
The first challenge was material options. After some lengthy discussions, we decided to go with neon for the lighted wand, a tried and true way to include multiple colors that blink. The sign industry has largely moved to LEDs as a way to accomplish this and we could have gone that route too, but with an antique shop, neon seemed to fit the mood. The neon was created in the shape of a star-burst with a star in the middle and had to be 4 colors. This part of the sign was only 24” in diameter, so bending the neon and achieving purple, pink, green and yellow was a challenge for our neon specialist with so many colors at such a small size. The end product turned out great, though.
The next challenge was to take a very small image of a fairy that our customer had scanned from an old book and somehow make it at least 4’ tall and printable. Initially we told our customer that it probably wouldn’t work and we set out looking for an image of a fairy that was of sufficient resolution for us to print. We couldn’t find anything that both would work and that she liked, so our graphics specialist worked his magic and VOILA…a 4’ “Price Fairy” was redrawn/recreated based on the book image and sent to our wide-format digital printer. It was then applied to the black acrylic background in just the right position so that her wand “touched” the neon star-burst that had already been attached. Redesigning a logo is often an option, but we always like to explore other routes first, as often there are logos or images available that don’t require extensive art time.
After these challenges were overcome, all that was left to do was to apply two lines of vinyl lettering to announce that the antique shop is “The Home of The Price Fairy.”
Our production department might take exception with how easy typing out the steps in the assembly of this custom sign sounds, and they would be right to. A lot goes into a one-of-a-kind sign such as this, most of which never gets a second look, but is vital to the production of the sign. Things like hiding neon wires properly, pop-riveting standoffs, and balancing the signs weight so it hangs straight are all often overlooked aspects of production, but are essential in a quality sign.
NOW…for the exciting part, the reveal. We were off to deliver the neon sign to our customer a few miles from our door in St. Petersburg. We knew that they were excited to get their new sign….but we didn’t realize just HOW EXCITED. I arrived in my wrapped truck, and our production crew arrived in our wrapped delivery van. SIGNARAMA had arrived in force! What happened next was about to make our day, and apparently theirs too.
When the van door opened, we were greeted with cheers! To our surprise, the entire “event” was being videotaped by our excited customer, and ended up on YouTube later that night. There were numerous outbursts from the crowd that awaited us at the door of the shop…”She’s beautiful”…”Great Job”…”OMG the blinking neon is fabulous”…”The Price Fairy has arrived at her new home!” Neighboring shop owners were summoned to give their opinions…all of who gave nice compliments for our work.
Getting a lot of kudos for our work on the custom neon sign was well worth the effort we put into it…but the thing that made our day was the contagious enthusiasm that the owner and manager have for their business and consequently for their new custom neon sign. Our goal is to satisfy 100% of our customers here at Sign A Rama Tampa Bay, but Wednesday’s delivery of The Price Fairy was one of the most memorable we have had!
If you are in the Downtown St. Pete area, make sure you stop by Janet’s Antiques on Central Ave. They run an awesome business and have 40 years of experience under their belt. Check them out at www.janetsantiquesstpete.com and give them a call today at 727-823-5700! Or give us a call if you want to talk about your own custom sign.
We recently added a few more projects to our portfolio, and always like sharing new pictures. Here are three pictures recently added.
The first is a brand new, custom parking sign. We produced a few of these for locations in both Tampa and Clearwater.
The second is a double-sided box. The box is an aluminum box, fabricated for a second face on the other side not pictures. The faces are acrylic, with several colors in cut vinyl.
