Halo
Bagels Cafe
An illustrated logo turned into a rimless illuminated sign, on the ground floor of a brand-new East Harlem building.
Installed on the Madison Avenue frontage.
A bagel cafe opening in the retail base of a new residential development, with frontage on two streets. The client's logo is a hand-drawn script with a donut illustration — charming on a menu, tricky as a sign. Most fabrication methods would wreck it: trim caps put a dark outline around every letter, and a lightbox would bury it in a glowing rectangle.
The answer was rimless frontlit channel letters with digital-print translucent faces. The whole logo is cut as one shaped piece, the artwork printed directly on 3/16" white plastic, lit from behind with white SMD LED. Daytime it reads as clean print; at night the illustration itself glows in full color, with no trim edge interrupting the linework.
The building is new construction, so the hardware had to disappear against a fresh facade. Returns and background board in ivory to match the letter faces, and the raceway faced in mocha tan aluminum picked to match the masonry, so from the street the logo floats on the brick. One sign per frontage, same construction, sized to each storefront.
Elevations for both frontages, with construction spec and install section.
Install detail through the wall, final artwork, and the face bench-lit at the fabricator.
Left: the shaped channels in fabrication. Right: installation day.