Say Cheese

At Trader Joe's we're changing the big signs that name the different departments of the store. I have been tasked with replacing the old ones, from a previous administration, with fresh new signage. If you've been following this blog, you know of my fascination with the American pop style of the late 50s and early 60s, the style of Tomorrowland and the 1964 New York World's Fair. This is the style we are using to re-decorate the store. This Big Cheese is the first one of my new signs. The typeface is taken from 1960s California low-rise apartment building sign titles. The roughly triangular bar under the letters has the pseudo-Polynesian touch required by Trader Joe signage directives. 

The base of the sign is quarter-inch Masonite, 4 feet by 2 feet, which I sprayed to a proper shade of Cheddar orange. The free-form background, letters, and decoration are made of carefully sculpted foamboard, sprayed to the proper color. The cheese "holes" are painted on with acrylic. The free-form board was glued to the backing with craft glue, and the other stuff was stuck on with industrial-strength double-sided tape, a mainstay of our signmaking at Trader Joe's.

The general pattern will stay the same throughout all the big department signs, though the backing color will change. All the writing will be red, and there will be other bits and pieces of design appropriate to the department. I have about eight more of these to do.