December 2012
Long story short? The Haile Foundation and American Sign Museum started a project called CoSign that would unite artists and businesses to create signs for a neighborhood, the first pilot phase covered Northside.
What is CoSign?
CoSign facilitated the pairing of small business owners in the Northside neighborhood interested in new signage, and local artists interested in submitting sign proposals. Everyone with an interest attended a workshop to understand the economic value of signage, along with important zoning/permitting and design requirements.
Following the workshops, artists will submit designs for specific businesses of their choosing. Businesses will select the proposals they like best, establishing a partnership between themselves and the visual artist. Business owner/artist teams will then collaborate with expert sign fabricators during a Rapid Prototyping Blitz to solidify their final designs. A jury will choose the top 10 teams— based on originality, relative improvement and need— to move forward to fabrication.
Upon selection, each business owner/artist team will work alongside a sign fabricator to ensure their designs are produced on time and within budget.
I submitted proposals for three different businesses and one was selected! Very excited to have worked with Chris and Aileen of Fabricate to make this sketch come to life:
I used the photo below for my color inspiration, taken at their grand opening.
Next step? Refine the concept and get it ready for production.
Then it was time for the big reveal. Again at the Sign Museum! Yes, I almost always put an exclamation after the Sign Museum!
To cap off this project, I’ll share a few more of the signs that were produced after they were installed throughout Northside.
Want to see a favorite sign from the bunch?
Check out this post from February: The Wireless Store