Famous Apples was opening their first physical location and reached out to us after finding us online for their storefront sign. We made them a custom front-lit channel letter box to advertise their new location a the Northridge Fashion Center. A front-lit channel letter box was perfect for what they were looking for because they wanted an oval shape with their logo on a white background. When a client wants a sign that is internally illuminated, a channel letter is our first choice. When the front of the sign needs to light up, we make front-lit channel letters. A front-lit channel letter box is essentially a front-lit channel letter that we just make into different shapes. Whether it is a square, a ship, a cookie, or an oval, we can create any shape as long as it is physically possible to bend the aluminum that way.
For the face, we use white sign acrylic which is translucent. For the logo, we used a combination of translucent vinyl and opaque vinyl. The only opaque vinyl used was the black lettering for “apples” because black can’t be illuminated so we just use regular vinyl. If we use opaque vinyl for any other color, the LEDs will not shine through properly. For “FAMOUS”, we used a combination of pre-colored translucent vinyl and digitally printed translucent vinyl. This was because “FAM” and “US” is just solid red, but the apple has a gradient. So for the letters, we had the client pick out a red vinyl from the Oracal 8500 Series, and we digitally printed the apple separately.
The digitally printed logo will fade quicker than the rest of the lettering, but this was the best way to make sure that all of the details of Famous Apple’s logo would be included in the sign.