Guardian Angel is a Catholic school in Pacoima, California that we did a few signs for. The two main signs we made for them were medium-density fiberboard (MDF) signs. MDF is made from wood fibers, wax, and a resin binder which is formed into boards with high temperature and pressure. Although MDF is not solid wood, the way that it is manufactured makes it denser than plywood, which is why we used it for these outdoor signs.
Guardian Angel already had an existing marquee sign that they wanted to replace the faces on. We designed and made new panels and installed them onto the existing frames. We started with a 1/2″ thick board of MDF that we pained blue with a white border. All of the lettering was flat-cut from 1/4″ thick white acrylic to give it some dimension, and the logo was digitally printed and attached to the face of a 1/4″ thick piece of acrylic that was routed to the shape of the logo.
They also wanted a new sign at the back of the school in a similar design, but this sign was going on a wall between two classrooms so we didn’t have the same dimensions to work with. This sign was wider and shorter, so we took the same information and just laid it out in a different way. There was not an existing frame for this sign as it was brand new, but we just mounted it with screws and anchors directly to the wall.
On the front office building, we also added some dimensional lettering to identify the office. These didn’t need to be too flashy so we just make black acrylic dimensional letters from 1/4″ thick acrylic. Lastly, we made a directional sign that we installed underneath the marquee sign to direct people to the office that we had made the dimensional letter signs for.