A Modern Sign Rendition for the Gypsy Café in Lincoln, NH

Lincoln Signs is located in the picturesque White Mountains of Lincoln, New Hampshire, an area famous for world-class skiing, hiking, camping, and kayaking. In addition to the beautiful surroundings provided by mother nature, it’s an area also known for its beautiful signage, thanks in no small part to the artisans at Lincoln Signs. 

Lincoln Signs opened their doors in 1972, and was purchased by Roy Whitaker in 2013 from the second owners. Roy literally had no experience in the sign industry, however, he was very “handy” and is an entrepreneur, having owned fourteen different businesses. One of the things that drew Roy to the sign industry was the “all of the beautiful signs that he saw in the area surrounding Lincoln”.

When the Gypsy Café, a fun, casual, eclectic café in the center of downtown Lincoln needed a refresh on their 20-year-old sign, they asked Roy if he could help come up with a modern rendition. Besides handling the production aspect of signage, Lincoln Signs is very active in the creative and design aspects of all projects that come through his doors, and can create a sign from concept or enhance a customer’s existing idea or design. For the Gypsy Café, Roy and his team were asked by the customer to pay homage to the decorations inside the restaurant, by designing the border of the sign to match decorations inside the restaurant.

Per Roy; “We go into every project like this with the client to discover their vision while educating them on the materials and processes. Several illustrator mockups later and we had an agreed upon flat mockup. Once that is set, then the team discusses how the 3D design should be done (depths, details, features, etc). Then we discuss production, mounting, brackets, installation, reinforcements, etc. and order parts and materials. Then the shape gets cut, sanded, primed, painted, masked. Then the face carving is done, usually several toolpaths, then hand carving, then hand painting and gilding.” Roy uses design in Illustrator, and carves from Vectric software.

When routing this sign, Roy uses a 96” x 48” Shopbot router on a Gantry table. This is a very rare type of router and according to Roy, there are only three of them in the world. On this particular project he used 2” U150,15# CORAFOAM®, and has used CORAFOAM® exclusively for the past four years. He has found that CORAFOAM® “is the easiest carving material to work with. It's easy to handle, carves smoother than any other option, sands smoother and takes paint wonderfully.”

Lincoln Signs produces all different types of signs and specializes in dimensional signs. They are the longest running sign shop in the White Mountain region.

If you would like to check out some of Lincoln Sign’s creative work please go to:
https://lincolnsign.com/ or https://www.facebook.com/LincolnSignCompany