Sign Builder Illustrated - May 2008 - (Page 55)

City of Jacksonville Makes an Artistic LED Statement The Ritz Theater in Jacksonville, Florida, is a historical landmark that’s played host to such legendary entertainment luminaries as Ray Charles and Ella Fitzgerald. Now you add another bright star to this list—a dynamic, multi-colored LED-illuminated sculpture. When the owners of the Ritz Theater were looking to re-open its doors as a cultural event center last summer, it wanted to make an artistic statement with an illuminated sculpture positioned on two of the side corners of its building (viewable to oncoming I-95 traffic). Designer Susan Cooper originally envisioned the piece as neon, but nearby Quality Sign Company (www.qualitysigncompany.com) suggested linear LED tubes, with its promoted energy savings and vandal-resistance. The sign-sculpture was manufactured using Accent 2 from USLED (www.usled.com) of Houston, Texas. “If anything, the LED is an architectural enhancement or statement—a graphic detail, if you will,” says US LED Director of Sales-Southeast Division Fritz Meyne, Jr. (Note: USLED’s Accent 2 is regular super-flex LED that’s positioned end-to-end in a tube. The company cuts the tubes to length and seals them in a vacuum. Installers screw the two-inch-long clear u-channel tracks into the wall and then pop the Accent tube into it.) The square-filled sculpture-sign features sixteen feet of red Accent 2 LED tubing, fourteen feet of yellow, fourteen feet of blue, and sixteen feet of green, powered by two 80W power supplies. “It’s neat the way the designer designed it,” says Meyne. “The color kind of follows through. In some places, one color appears to go over another, and in some places, there’s a break.” The most pleasant surprise from this project is that since the LED tubes used are pigmented, the project offers both nighttime impact and daytime visibility. “Since the tubes are pigmented, the colors will also show up during daytime hours without having to be powered on,” says Meyne. “It was one of those things that hit me like a ton of bricks! With neon (and especially clear neon), only phosphor-coated tubes are going to show up when they’re turned off. But pigmented LED tubing colors can be seen during daylight, which adds to the energy savings.” Quality Sign Company fabricated the sign and installed it. They created a two-inch-square (one-inchby-two-inch) aluminum tube frame. After doing so, they mounted all of the LED bars on top of the tube in the shop, which meant that once they took it out to the site, the install would be pretty easy. They drilled the mounting holes and mounted the whole up onto the top corner of the complex. They had already hooked up the electrical connections in the shop. City officials were so impressed by the finished result that they actually replaced an additional 360 feet of neon with the same USLED product. This sign-sculpture was also prominently featured in the City’s Guide to Jacksonville Public Places Collection brochure. PHOTOS BY CHERYL MEYNE/QUALITY SIGN COMPANY. May 2008 Sign Builder Illustrated 55

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Sign Builder Illustrated - May 2008

Sign Builder Illustrated - May 2008 Contents SBI Agenda Quotes & Comments Contributors Costly Concerns Dispatches Sign Show Dateline: Time to Find a New Identity Teaching a New Dog Old Tricks Sign Illumination: It’s Time to Pay Attention Restoring Old Photographs for Digital Printing Price Doesn’t Sell the Signs You Want to Make Architects in LED Codes for Electric Signs: Don’t Get Blindsided! Digital Displays at the Pearl Harbor Museum The Art of Wayfinding Signage Grand Format National Following Traffic Sign Regulations Designs on ADA Signage Painting Professionally SBI Marketplace Imagine-It Graphics

Sign Builder Illustrated - May 2008

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