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Joseppi's Italian Kitchen
is the fourth in a series of restaurants
which began with Eskimo Joe's. Just
about anyone familiar at all with
Stillwater, OK or Oklahoma State University
has probably heard of Eskimo
Joe's. The enterprise started
out as a small bar and grew into a
merchandising
phenomenon. The original
Eskimo Joe's logo and character design
was created by an OSU graphic design
student named Bill Thompson in 1975
when the bar opened. Today, owner
Stan Clark has an accomplished design
staff responsible for creating ever
more impressive T-shirt designs, posters
and other merchandise. Clark's spin-off
restaurants, Stillwater Bay, Mexico
Joe's and Joseppi's, all have variations
of the animated Eskimo Joe theme.
The street sign
for Joseppi's Italian Kitchen is another
collaboration between Arrow Sign Company
in Lawton and Irwin Custom Sign Company
in Stillwater. Both companies have
been partners on a number of jobs
over the years. The two worked on
the Mexico Joe's sign project in 2001.
The Joseppi's Italian Kitchen street
sign project is more ambitious for
its combination of different sign
media.
The art department
for Stan Clark Companies developed
the original concept for the Joseppi's
street sign. They also supplied finished
vector graphics of the Joseppi character
and sign background. Arrow Sign made
small modifications to even out geometrical
features of the cabinet. This served
to make construction more practical
and organized as well as make subtle
visual improvements to the design.
Arrow's design staff created the neon
tubing layouts and computer nested
all the metal routing tasks to get
a full account on material needs.
With all the advance planning finished,
final shop drawings and spec sheets
were generated for review.
Two separate sections,
that we call the "arch"
and the "bowl," make up
the Joseppi's sign. Both sections
feature heavily reinforced angle iron
frames, 1/8" thick routed aluminum
faces and tough sheet metal fillers.
The arch section contains the open
face Joseppi's channel letters with
exposed triple stroke yellow gold
neon. The ends of the arch feature
wrap around border neon made of colored
ruby red glass. Our tube bender put
in the extra effort to wrap the glass
around the corners of the arch and
conform it to the curve radii of the
arch. The "bowl" section
combines a Panaflex face area for
the Joseppi character and a metal
background below for the exposed "Italian
Kitchen" single stroke green
neon lettering. Neon housing holes
were programmed into the aluminum
routing jobs. That removed the need
for installation patterns. The channel
letters were fixed to both sides of
the arch in under one hour.
This page is currently
under construction, as is the Joseppi's
project itself. As of this writing,
the cabinet construction is finished
and heat transfer Panaflex faces are
about to be installed into the "bowl"
section by Irwin Custom Sign. They
are handling final installation of
the project in Stillwater. We hope
to have some photos of that part of
the job added here pretty soon, as
well as some pictures of the completed
project. The webmaster is planning
a trip to Stillwater to get good photos
of the finished Joseppi's street sign
as well as new night time shots of
the Mexico Joe's street sign next
door.
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