About this Project

As Calamar Construction celebrated its 30-year Anniversary, it was important that they mark the occasion with a full wall timeline display of their company’s history.

Cooper Sign worked directly with the owner to develop a design concept that best displayed the company’s history and image. The project grew to encompass much more; a Family Tribute wall and Founder’s wall were added, the Timeline wall became two walls, allowing room for the timeline to grow as the company expands.

The Timeline wall and Tribute wall feature many different materials and processes, which combined achieve museum quality results.  Cooper Sign recommended the paint color for the wall to be a neutral background gray and Calamar green stripe was added to the length of the wall. Running parallel to the stripe, specialty 3M Di-Noc vinyl was installed (over 35 ft in one piece). The slight wave and glimmer in the pattern gives the viewer a sense of movement and direction to the wall.

The company name and logo are dimensional flat cut acrylic painted to match the company’s brand standards and mounted directly to the wall.  Each of the panels that mark the year is a solid 1” thick painted backers with flat cut brushed ¼” aluminum numbers.

All the photos and descriptions are printed on clear acrylic panels after Cooper Sign Company checked the photo quality to ensure a clear and crisp end result. The prints are on the back of the acrylic (second surface) which allows them to be easily cleaned and less likely to be damaged.  To mark the anniversary’s, the 25^th is composed of a brushed aluminum backer with two layers of flat cut black and white acrylic and the 30^th is a larger white acrylic backer with reverse cut acrylic painted to match the Calamar green. Black aluminum standoffs were used to mount the photos and anniversary panels to differentiate them from the other components.

The Family Tribute wall has a floor to ceiling digital print wall mural of a historical map of Niagara County and using existing framed family photos and memorabilia Cooper Sign Company designed where each piece would be mounted.  Images were reframed to give them a more contemporary aesthetic. As we worked on this project, you could definitely feel the impact a grandfather had on his grandson when they started the business together.

The Founders wall features charcoal portraits of each founder along with a nameplate. Each nameplate has a layered backer of brushed aluminum and painted acrylic, then a clear acrylic panel with direct digital print and mounted with standoffs to tie into the design of the Timeline wall.  Each of the Founder’s photos are a statement of the hard work and vision to grown the company into what it is today.

It was a great project with a happy customer who referred to our work as “museum quality”, which it is.  The key to success on this type of project is listening to the customer tell the story of company from start to finish and remembering our mission statement to exceed our customers’ expectations for the design and manufacture of signs.