When Others Laughed at His Sign, We Took the Project Seriously

When Others Laughed at His Sign, We Took the Project Seriously Every business owner deserves to be taken seriously. When the owner of D & Codie’s Pizza & Breakfast started looking for someone to produce his storefront sign, his experience with another sign company was not what it should have been. Instead of working with him to understand the design and figure out how to manufacture it, he was reportedly met with jokes about the concept and an outrageous $1 million price quote. Whether that number was meant to discourage the project or simply dismiss it, the message was clear: we don’t want to do this. That is not how we operate at Signarama Buffalo Grove. We Looked at the Sign as a Fabrication Challenge, Not a Problem The D & Codie’s logo was not a simple rectangular cabinet or a standard set of block channel letters. It included a custom script, dimensional illuminated lettering and a circular logo incorporating detailed artwork. That takes more thought. So rather than telling the customer what couldn’t be done, our team worked through how it could be done. We engineered and fabricated the custom sign components in our Wheeling shop, including the dimensional illuminated letters and the round logo cabinet. The finished sign retained the character of the restaurant’s branding while creating something substantial enough to work on a commercial storefront. And because we manufacture signs ourselves, we were able to work directly through the fabrication details instead of simply passing the project to somebody else. Built in Our Shop. Installed on His Building. One of the best parts of a custom sign project is seeing it move from drawings and raw materials to a finished product. During fabrication, the D & Codie’s letters were laid out across our production tables while our team completed the lighting, faces, returns and assembly. The large circular logo was fabricated alongside the individual letters before everything was prepared for installation. Then it went where it belonged: on the building. The completed storefront now features the illuminated D & Codie’s lettering and custom circular logo prominently above the entrance, with the secondary Pizza & Breakfast identification below it. It looks like it was always supposed to be there. Sometimes the Right Answer Is Simply, “We Can Build That.” Custom signage is not always easy. Logos were not necessarily designed with aluminum fabrication, acrylic, LEDs, electrical requirements and installation hardware in mind. A good sign manufacturer knows how to translate that artwork into something that can actually be built. That is where experience matters. At Signarama Buffalo Grove, we routinely fabricate custom illuminated signs, channel letters, cabinets, dimensional lettering and specialty signage in-house. Our job is not to make customers feel foolish for bringing us an unusual idea. Our job is to figure it out. D & Codie’s did not need a million-dollar sign. They needed a sign company willing to take their business—and their vision—seriously. That, we could take care of.