Real? Or Romantic?

As design and marketing professionals, our job is to present our clients' products, services and stories in their best possible lights. Our job is to find that fine line between conveying the reality of a product's characteristics while also promoting the romantic nature of experiencing that product's essence. Hitting that sweet spot can achieve maximum excitement while retaining responsible credibility.

This challenge of reality versus romanticism was brought to light (literally and figuratively) with a studio project several years ago. My daughter, Emily Page, and I were bemoaning the fate of some of the area's best neon signs and set out to capture them photographically, before their demise. The goal was to create a set of 12 local sign images and to weave them into the studio's holiday gift as a desktop calendar. At first, it seemed logical that the signs should be shot after dark, fully lit. That proved to be problematic as many of the signs were not fully functional and the nighttime shots did not show their full architecture. Various times of day and various types of exposure were explored, with varying results.

What it came down to was this – the signs were just better to experience in person, and even better still in our minds. How could we convey their experiential or former glory, but remain somewhat journalistically truthful? Emily and I brought Page Design PhotoShop wizard, Kurt Kland, into the project and posed that challenge. The ground rules were that no elements could be added or invented. Only existing elements could be polished, painted, relit or otherwise restored.

Kurt rose to the challenge and began combining the best exposures and repairing the rust and blemishes. Encouraged by his results, Emily continued shooting the signs at differing times to capture the details Kurt needed. Soon the electricity from the signs was radiating from the images on Kurt's desktop. Before long a series of 24 of these images – enough for two calendars – had been created.

The images became so popular that the calendars were soon selling at local gift stores. A series of note cards were also created featuring the images. Recently, in the Page Design vaults, a stash of these note cards was discovered. We have assembled them into sets of six cards and envelopes and would like to offer them to any of our friends who are interested. (Please contact Paul or Heather and we will make arrangements to get a set to you.)

Click on any of the signs below to view a befor a before and after image.

Flame Club
2130 16th Street, Sacramento