Island Bar – Birmingham
Our Process
During our weekly creative meeting, we came up with the idea of a hand painted surfboard onto a reclaimed wood background and halo illuminated letters. We then pitched this idea to the client who loved it. Raph (our graphic designer) spent a total of 8 hours getting the design just right. Once this was signed off, we had a meeting with the client so that he could choose the colours for the wood panelling, lettering etc. Unfortunately, due to the sheer amount required, it was not possible to use reclaimed wood, so we went to a local timber merchants who recommended the wood we eventually used. They even cut this to size, which saved us a few hours.
Illuminated Letters
To make the halo illuminated letters, we cut 20mm white foam on the CNC and built up 3 layers. The third layer was hollowed to allow for the LED’s. There were bonded together, sanded, primed and spray painted. We didn’t want them to look too perfect, so we left the edges a little rough. This helped us get the desired effect when dry brushing the returns. We then used spray paint to distress the face. We then fixed the LED’s and laser cut the acrylic for the backs of the letters. Translucent blue cast vinyl was applied to these to give the blue glow which symbolises the water. This process probably took us a total of 12 hours. All we had to do then was secure the letters to the board and connect the wires.
Wood Panelling
We then spent 10 hours treating and staining 25m x 1m of wood panelling. To make it look really rustic we used 4 different shades of grey and distressed it using grey and black spray paint on a third of the panels.
The 4880mm surfboard was cut from marine ply using a jigsaw. It was then treated and the edges sealed before priming. We had to leave 75mm edge primer free for the wood effect. It was then painted using traditional signwriting techniques and one shot paints. This took approx. 16 hours. The edges were then stained using a mixture of three wood stains to give the aged effect before applying an external satin varnish.
The Finishing Touches
We spent two days on site. The first was spent fixing the timbers that the panels were to be secured to and then attaching the panels in a random manor to ensure that the greys were mixed up. We took a saw on site with us so that we could cut the panels around other remaining fixtures such as awnings and alarm boxes. On the second day we installed the surfboard and covered the projecting illuminated sign with an aluminium composite wrap so that it matched the new sign. We also stencilled and spray painted their tag line onto the sign over a 10m area.
