Speaker 1: (00:04)
Hi, you’re listening to the highway man signs podcast, your best top Tulsa sign company here in the Tulsa, Skiatook, and Bartlesville areas here in Oklahoma. And thanks for listening today. We’re going to talk a little bit about, um, what we call design versus conversion, and essentially just kind of like a lot of people want to save money, um, and who doesn’t want to do that? You know, everybody wants to save money. A lot of people want to save money by converting an old sign, uh, into something, something new. Um, it can be done if you’ve already got it. Um, I’ll give you an example and this kind of came up this week because we had a customer asking the same thing, and it’s a good question to come up with.
Speaker 1: (01:04)
Um, they have some metal letters on our building that are non light. They’re just aluminum metal letters. They’re probably two inches deep. Um, yeah, they’re, they’re nice letters. Uh, that’s actually, they’re actually fairly new even, um, when they built the building and put these on there now they’ve decided they want the backlight and they want to have what we call a it’s called backlighting and not to confuse that with front lighting, which is what most signage is. Um, people outside the industry call it backlighting um, because there’s lights behind the face. That’s not actually what it’s called. It’s called front lighting. If you see the light coming through the face on the front, but it’s called backlighting. If only if all you see is the glow around the letter, um, you don’t actually see the lighting. It’s all an indirect lighting that you see. So they want a back like these letters.
Hi, you’re listening to the highway man signs podcast, your best top Tulsa sign company here in the Tulsa, Skiatook, and Bartlesville areas here in Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: (01:58)
Um, the problem with this is because they’re not designed and that’s what we’re talking about, design versus conversion, because they’re not designed with lighting in mind. Um, this proves very, very difficult. Um, can it be done? Sure. You know, with enough, with enough determination you can do just about anything, right. Um, but here’s what ends up happening. You’re trying to convert something like that. It doesn’t have all the parts for one, obviously the lighting is one thing, but, um, generally how backlash is actually done on those kinds of letters. Not like they’re just stuck on the back of the letter and they shine back where there’s not exactly how it’s done, um, to get it to be a true backlight letter. Um, there’s actually a polycarbonate piece may eat for the backs of the, it’s kind of like a, a normal channel that are in reverse or there’s a polycarbonate backing and then a metal front.
You’re listening to the highway man signs podcast, your best top Tulsa sign company here in the Tulsa, Skiatook, and Bartlesville areas here in Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: (02:54)
And generally how that works is they make the letters for the back. They Mount the lighting to that. So the lighting actually shines forward into the back of the ladder and then, um, reflects onto the building. So you get an even light around and, uh, leave and glow around letter. Um, you know, this, this gives it the best, the best look now the problem with converting, uh, existing letters to this for one, I think for first, for a lighting, it needs to be four to five inches at a minimum, uh, to get a good, um, even go around there. Um, these letters weren’t, they were only about two inches thick. Um, another thing is they don’t have the polycarbonate backing, um, unless you have your own CNC router or a similar type machine where you can cut out the layers, or if you’re good enough to cut them out by hand, uh, with hand tools, jigsaws, uh, table saw, et cetera, um, it’s going to be very, very difficult to find a company that’s going to make those for you.
You’re listening to the highway man signs podcast, your best top Tulsa sign company here in the Tulsa, Skiatook, and Bartlesville areas here in Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: (04:06)
Um, no national company will do it unless they’ve actually made the letters to begin with. Um, unfortunately it’s just, um, pretty standard across the industry. Uh, as far as that goes again, it’s something that we could do as something that we could make in house. Um, but again, we’re talking about making them by hand. We don’t have, we don’t personally have, um, the capabilities of doing something like that, um, right now with like a router or things like that. We we’d have to do it by hand. Not saying we, we can’t do it. I actually have done in the past, so I know how difficult it can be. Um, then also, you know, trying to make sure that, uh, the letter stroke is thick enough for the letters, um, or for the letters, but the letters stroke is thick enough for the lighting, because if it’s not, if it’s not thick enough to hide the led modules, um, then again, you’re going to have a problem.
You’re listening to the highway man signs podcast, your best top Tulsa sign company here in the Tulsa, Skiatook, and Bartlesville areas here in Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: (05:04)
Um, so that could be an issue right there. Um, so definitely there’s a lot of things to think about and some people signed willingly to slap some lights behind there. Um, you know, we had highway man, um, we want everything to come out looking professional. Uh, it’s my, um, it’s my wish that every job that we do, um, is at the highest standards possible. Um, yeah, I’m not going to put something together that looks janky looks homemade. Um, and that’s not, that’s not who we are. It’s not what we want to do is not what we want to put forth. Um, uh, but another thing about designers more, and like I said, some people want to save money by trying to convert some, they already have some people want to do this, uh, upfront or thinking, okay, I’m gonna buy these letters. And then later on, I’m going to, I’m going to backlight.
Speaker 1: (05:57)
Um, again, the same thing you’re going to end up paying more, um, by not doing, uh, you know, by not doing it all at once. Um, you know, you know, if you don’t have the budget for that, but that’s what you want in the future, maybe fine, you know, maybe try to do something else for the time being, um, you know, putting up a mat, just a metal sign, a, you know, a four by eight metal sign or something like that, aluminum, uh, or ACM, um, you know, with your logo on it until you can, you know, until you have it in your budget to make, um, you know, to, to have metal letters and things like that. Um, or back-lit letters, channel letters, et cetera. Um, because it wasn’t gonna happen. You’re gonna make your mother’s letters and put them up, and then you’re gonna realize you can’t convert them to being backlit, uh, without paying a lot more in labor costs. And then again, it still may not look as good, um, as what you could have had, uh, in the beginning. So, um, that’s kinda what we’re going to, you know, that’s, that’s kind of design versus conversion. Uh, appreciate you guys listening today. Uh, again, I’m Kenny with the highway man signs podcast, your best top Tulsa sign company here in the Tulsa, Skiatook, and Bartlesville areas here in Oklahoma.
Thanks again for listening. We’ll catch you next time.