Clover Signs Blog

If you’ve browsed our website www.cloversigns.co.uk, you may have noticed we use lots of gold to make the signs. Gold is such a fantastic material for sign making, it’s amazing that so many people are fooled into buying brass signs.

Gold will never tarnish! Brass will.
Gold leaf looks like gold. Gold paint looks horrible.

We use extra thick 23.5 carat gold.

Gold also lasts a very long time, reflects more light than any other element and looks fantastic on black.

I am going to write more about using gold leaf to gild in a future post, but for now here is a picture of a gold leaf house sign:

If you want a gilded house sign, click here to view our selection.

Can you do a sign called “The Chaplins” with a picture of Charlie himself on it?

Of course we can! Here we are: black house sign with carved gilded letters (real gold that is) and a famous scene from “Modern Times” repainted on the sign in Acrylics.

The best thing is, we don’t take any money until we have produced a design you like. So you don’t have to trust our word - just wait to see the design. Request a sign design here.

Our main website makes full use of the excellent lightbox.js script first published by Lokesh Dhakar . When I first saw the script, I knew it was the answer to the problem of how to display image galleries without Flash or Pop ups.

If you are not familiar with the way the script works, have a look at the “Custom Signs Gallery” on our main page.

There is one HUGE problem with the original scripts you will find all over the web. There has been many mods to the script to make it lighter etc, but in all cases, the back button breaks! This is a terrible thing to do.

Hence we decided to set about fixing it. You can see that the back button will work on the custom signs page, but will break on Lokesh’s original demo pages. We needed to make the back button close the lightbox, not take you to the previous page.

Here is the solution:

UPDATE: I have now made a homepage for this called BackBox.  You will find all you need there.
This implementation should fix the back button in all modern browsers, leaving you with a cool, usable, standard compliant lightbox!

Clover Signs has now started making signs for the international market. High Density Urethane Signs hold up very well to extreme weather conditions such as heavy rain and high UV levels.

Someone wanted a sign for their house in the Philippines, so this is what we designed and made:

The sign features carved and gilded letters on a black background. We only use real gold as it outlasts and outlooks any paint you can buy. The palm tree is sculpted and the flags hand painted. The sign is made out of High Density Urethane and has hidden aluminum mounting brackets.

This sign was shipped to a UK address, but we can ship internationally for about £20.00 extra.

I crept up to our house sign workshop one morning to check up on the expensive, highly trained guard dog.

This is what I found:

I would vote that this is the laziest guard dog in the world.

I develop my websites in Firefox (of course) and use 4 extensions heavily. In fact - now I have them, I can’t do without them.

1. Web Developer (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60)
This is possibly the best tool I have ever seen for website design and development. The ability to turn scripts on or off, disable cookies, examine CSS etc.  Where would I be without it?

2. Firebug (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843)
I have to admit, that since I installed Firebug, I have used some features in Web Developer less. The best feature is the ability to see how fast your site is downloading - and which scripts/images etc are causing hang-ups.

3. IE View Lite (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1429)
Because I develop in Firefox, I have to keep checking how it looks in Internet Explorer - because Microsoft still can’t… (I’m sure you know the rest)

4. Html Validator (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/249)
Quick and easy validator to make sure your code is good. Valid Html is not everything, but it’s amazing how much time you can save when it comes to fixing problems when you have good code.

Hopefully you find these extensions useful. It certainly speeds up my design and development.

We often get asked how me make the “carved and gilded” text look on the free sign proofs we make. Well, here is a short tutorial on how it’s done using Photoshop CS.

1.Start with plain type on a dark surface

2. Select the text and border (the area to be carved and gilded) using the magic wand tool. Make a new layer from the selection using Layer>New>Layer via Copy.

3. In the layers palette, double click on the new layer to open it. Click on the “Bevel and Emboss” button.

4. Change the settings as follows:

You can click the image above to see it bigger - so you can read the settings. The colour of the “Highlight Mode” is white, the shadow mode is “#4E500A”.

5. Click “Colour Overlay” and set the colour to “CC9900″.

6. Click “OK” and you should have a carved and gilded sign. You may have to fiddle with the colours to make it look right on your PC. Here is what you should be left with:

Hopefully this works for you.

When we first started making enquiries in the house sign market, no sign makers would tell us how many orders they get. I don’t see the point in hiding this sort of information - on the 18th of May, 2007, we made our 500th sign this year!

Here’s a picture. Carved palladium letters on a black sign with sculpted bee hive and bees. It was a custom sign request.

Many people want to know where we buy High Density Urethane (HDU) from. We used to import it from the USA, but that was a bit expensive. After a little research we found an Italian company who makes it. They call it Corafoam - and it’s fantastic!

The company is called DUNA-Corradini and you can see their website here: www.dunagroup.com

You have to buy quite a large quantity to make it worthwhile, so if you want a small piece you can ask Clover Signs - and they might let you have some.

I was phoned last week by someone wanting a memento of their years in London. They were moving back to the USA in a couple weeks. They had noticed a logo which says “RBKC” on all the lampposts in their area and wanted a replica on a sign.
Here is the photo they sent and the resulting sign: