My father and I have a handful of conversations that we seem to return to again and again — one of them is the “what kind of shop are we?” conversation. After all, we design buildings and logos, we build theme parks and furniture, we make sculptures and signs…
We don’t really fit in a single category, Nevertheless (since we do make signs), one of the ways we think of ourselves is as a sign shop. But we think of “signs” differently than many sign makers. For us, a “sign” is far more than just a flat board with letters stuck on it. Our definition of a sign includes anything that brings attention to our customer's business, product or service. A “sign” can be; a building’s design, a monumental sculpture or anything else we can think of!
The MultiCam offices and boardroom are a great example of this philosophy in action. We worked with the general contractor to include a three dimensional “M” medallion (for MultiCam) throughout the office — in the wainscotting, and as corner-blocks in the trim around doors and windows. Each “M” medallion was tweaked to suite the room it went into. The end result was a subtle branding campaign and a wonderful detail throughout the office and showroom areas.
For the submarine boardroom, we used a round version of the “M” medallion — complete with rivets. Below you can see a screen shot of the file we created in EnRoute. These were placed in the wainscot trim and a larger version was the centrepiece of each arched rib.
The weathering on these “M” medallions was created using a texture bitmap from our Texture Magic: Classic Collection, called splotches. Once routed, it looks amazingly like weathered metal. The rust paint finish will complete the story. The medallions were tool pathed with a 3/8" ball nose rough pass and a 1/8" tapered bit at a 75% overlap for the final pass. We routed them from inch and a half thick, 30 lbs. Precision Board HDU.
