Midcentury Modern "Neon" Marquee Sign

Jeff did something this year he's never done for his birthday: He asked me to make him something. Specifically, a marquee-type sign for our basement bar. He sketched out an idea (in PowerPoint of all places) and it had good elements: a midcentury font and a multicolored-diamond background, but the font was all one size, it needed a bigger variety of elements and type and it was frankly just too square for midcentury modern. That's where I jumped in.

In one of my past lives (or past decades) I designed newspaper pages. While a typical newspaper page doesn't really wow in the design world, a few feature and sports stories gave me a chance to experiment visually — and to commit all the InDesign shortcuts to memory.

Because Jeff and I have been together so long, I know what he likes about MCM, so I decided he would trust me a bit to take his design as a starting point and make it my own — in maybe the most derivative way: by pulling from real MCM signs. I found a few pics online of signs with elements I knew could work together, and sketched something out in InDesign. The design process took about a day, and I never hemmed or hawed about colors; I just knew.

So without burying you in details, come watch my workshop grows into a pig sty while a bit of lumber and styrofoam grow into the coolest thing I've ever done and the best gift Jeff says he's ever received.