FASTSIGNS of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., created interior and exterior signage for Maggie McFly’s ninth location at Albany’s Crossgates Mall.

Saratoga Springs, N.Y., is typically known for horse racing (and relentless construction), but FASTSIGNS of Saratoga Springs worked with an aviation theme for a recent project—one which won the six-year-old franchise the Grand Prize at the Wide Format & Signage/FASTSIGNS Awards, held during the annual FASTSIGNS International Convention in Phoenix, Ariz., January 15–18, 2020. Thirty miles south of Saratoga, just outside Albany, is Crossgates Mall, the Capital District’s premier shopping center. Craft eatery and bar Maggie McFly’s was opening its ninth location at Crossgates—its first in New York State—and tapped FASTSIGNS of Saratoga Springs to create the interior and exterior signage, including backlit acrylic channel letters with copper-colored vinyl, as well as ADA signs for the rest rooms, frosted vinyl on the front door that matched the painted logo on the exterior of the building, interior artwork with French cleats and acrylic surfaces, and, on the exterior, a 14-foot illuminated ring on the outside of the building, along with a 110-foot sign band that wraps the exterior. Four sets of reverse halo signs promote Maggie McFly’s catchphrase: “LOCAL, CRAFT, EATERY AND BAR”—all with matching painted copper. 

Early in the process, the FASTSIGNS team, working with materials spec’d by the project’s architect, discovered that the vinyl that covered the LED-lit translucent acrylic channel letters had a tendency to change color under different kinds of lighting. A specific shade of copper is part of Maggie McFly’s branding, but at night, the letters changed color. “We had asked them, ‘Do you really want this vinyl on these channel letters, because it’s a weird color that, when it gets illuminated, it changes dramatically,’” said Rick Bult, owner of FASTSIGNS of Saratoga Springs. “This was a metallic copper that when it was illuminated, it went to kind of a manila folder shade of yellow, not even remotely close to copper. It looked great during the day, but looked terrible at night.” The architect had said that they had the same issue at a previous installation the year before, but hadn’t come up with a solution. “We started playing around with different vinyls, different acrylics, different polycarbonates,” Bult adds. They created four options, lit them, and ultimately chose one that kept the same color characteristics regardless of lighting. “We found a cast wrapping vinyl that you’d use on a vehicle that was thin enough to let light through and didn’t change color a whole lot from day to night.”