This is a little off the main path for the sort of stuff I normally do but, some children of whom I am fond are incorporating reading the Harry Potter books into their educational curriculum and, taking a fairly immersive approach. So, obviously, some signs were needed for the decor.
These are inspired by but, not exact reproductions of anything from the franchise. I looked at photos of old London street signs and other fan art for inspiration.
It looks like the typeface used on a lot of old UK street signs has been encoded in a font called Kindersley Street / Kindersley Grand Arcade, which you can download for free here:
There is some texture in the engraved area but, it’s a pretty unobtrusive slight orange-peel sort of thing. It felt like it fit the vibe for a public sign. It’s even less noticeable on the library signs since those were white on the top layer (i.e., white that engraves to black).
I engraved without masking and, there was some smoke/residue deposition on the white areas. A little citrus solvent took it right off. I followed that with couple washings with dishsoap and water to remove the residue from citrus solvent.
“Classical” UK street and transportation signs are generally smooth black surface (or colors) for letters and border, with the white area recessed, so you would engrave them opposite of how you did these.
Modern ones are just printed on flat steel or aluminum, like you would find here in the US, but as most of the infrastructure is fairly old, the antique ones are predominant.
The platform and Diagon Alley signs are the smooth black-on-top acrylic with the white being the recessed engraved area. The lettering and border are detectably raised when viewed or touched in person. I think that’s how you are describing that they should be.
It’s just the library signs that are smooth white on top with the black recessed/engraved.
I can’t find the file, I probably just took a screen shot from PowerPoint and loaded that into the UI.
Checking in PowerPoint, I think the texture was “Granite”…
I know it’s ridiculous and I’m quite handy in Inkscape and Gimp, but my career of over 20 years had me using PowerPoint on a daily basis and some things are just so quick and simple to produce using it. My niece was thrilled and I think I spent 2 minutes “designing” it. I have a document I just keep adding to, it’s over 40 “slides” and includes things like the dodecahedron we contributed to, my “brand” that I put on things I give away, and dozens of stupid simple things I’ve made to make my life easier.
(I think I made this keychain before I started keeping a “rolling” PPTX file of all the nonsense I come up with…)
A small sample. I use it for vinyl cutting work as well…
thanks for the files!
