This monster truck is called The Beast and it’s helping to take Brooklyn’s The Shop out on the road. We also painted the storefront for this motorcycle club/cafe/bbq/bar/concert venue in Williamsburg but there’s another level of responsibility that comes with painting a car. Mitch hand painted a white logo on both sides of the black truck. We love how simple and sleek the lettering looks to represent the brand as it takes its business out on the road for the next few months.
Mmmmeatballs. We are big fans of The Meatball Shop, a mega-popular NYC restaurant that’s quickly growing throughout NYC’s neighborhoods. Thus, we were happy to be the ones to gild their West Village branch’s gold leaf and paint the various locations’ interior signs.
In efforts to make this classic gold leaf sign stand out as much as possible, okMitch added a few tweaks to the overall design. Mitch painted a black background against the mirrored and textured matte gold letters and ornamentation, added sharp drop shadows to “The” and “Shop”, and for the final touch, outlined it all in a bright red.
Designers/restauranteurs, AvroKO, contacted us to create some small distressed lettering on the front doors of their Bowery eatery. Wish we could have painted the horses, Saxon + Parole, but we have fun with aging the signs- we don’t get too many requests to turn a new spot old again.
A NYC music staple for downtowners is Ludlow Guitars. The owners were refreshing the brand and storefront, so came to us with a raw sketch that needed to be ironed out by a professional. After many rounds, the result is an extremely detailed logo and a play off a royal crest that incorporates UK and American elements (representing the national backgrounds of the store’s team).
Breaking some of our paint and gold on normal surfaces flow is the the Cow Parade, which last came to New York in 2000. We received a unique phone call asking us to revitalize one of these bovines, bought at 2000’s auction.
The original artwork entitled “The Big Apple” had badly deteriorated as the old girl had been weathering away in her upstate home. As a sign painter, the thought was that Mitch could best provide a long lasting paint job.
Mitch was also tasked with giving her a new apple theme, based on various photos from the cow’s adoptive family’s apple orchard in Vermont. Playing with the images, he came up with a design reminiscent of the rorschach test. Once the trippy design was hand painted on, the cattle was set back out to pasture, right next to another sculpture which resembles an “ok”.
A beautiful art deco style skyscraper called the Chanin building sits across the street from Grand Central Station. Rize Coffee recently opened its doors in this historical space. Glass signs were against landmarks regulations in the building, but we were able to get traditional gold leaf gilding approved for the cafe. Utilizing mirrored gold for that sun shiny look, Mitch gilded three large logos across the Rize Coffee’s glass storefront.
Some special pics of Mitch’s necessary gilding tools after the jump too.
Masak means “to play with food”, and it’s also a new Singaporean inspired food joint located in the East Village. Not only is the food pretty darn good but so are the desserts and cocktails.
Mitch messed around with the gold leaf on this storefront too. Contracted as matte gold leaf sign with some see-through elements, Mitch also decided to add a texture pattern on the gold. Then when the sign was technically done, Mitch wasn’t quite satisfied with the matte only look, believing the small details of these ornate signs should be highlighted. After sleeping on it, Mitch went back and gilded the mirrored gold onto the address and logo. Arguably it looked good both ways, but the final result is definitely the most striking of the two versions.
Voted #2 Best Sandwich by NY Mag, making it #1 in Manhattan, Pane Panelle is a new takeout spot, situated right next door to its mother restaurant, Stuzzicheria. We designed (half of them), built, painted, lightly distressed and finally drilled the wooden signs into Tribeca’s new Italian hole-in-a-wall.
Scosha is a talented designer and the wife of proprietor of NYSF (a large sign we painted last winter). Her Williamsburg store called for some matte white gold treatment, which was installed last spring. As you can see we’re catching up on some past due blog posts!
Sometime last spring, we painted this simple and modern sign on Thirstbaràvin, wine bar and restaurant in Prospect Heights. Unfortunately, most of our photos went missing, so all we have is this one of Mitch putting on the finishing coat.
Once just a little spot off of Bedford Ave. in Williamsburg, Pop’s of Brooklyn just opened up a second location in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village.
We had the opportunity to dress up the new storefront with hand painted lettering and metal signs. These metal boxes, built by okMitch, were positioned on either sides of the clock (also painted to match the rest of the exterior) to highlight the building’s corner visibility. Coating the original metal sofit with a flat black paint quickly transformed the dated 90’s look of Pop’s predecessor to something a bit more classic. The painted pigeon and slightly angled lettering add some character. If you go inside you’ll find even more characters, the guys who make up the Pop’s crew.
Many of our favorite flicks from the project can be found after the jump.
On a quiet block on the Upper East Side between York and East End Ave., sits a quaint, new eatery called East End Kitchen. Using metallic colors to hand paint the sign, Mitch and one of our new painters Fernando worked under the hot sun to whip up the sign before their opening date.
Yummy burger spot, two 8 two, added an additional sign to their Atlantic Ave. face. The painted, burger shaped wood board complements their super gold leaf gilded sign and now provides a marker for hungry passerbys walking up and down the block.
Aritzia, a women’s clothing boutique, is based out of Vancouver, British Columbia and operates locations throughout Canada, the US’ West Coast and even London, but they are a fresh new spot for flowy/hippie girly pieces in New York City. Each of their locations is uniquely designed and not one is a duplicate of the other.
okMitch Studio developed all the permanent window signage for the store, located smack in the middle of SoHo on Broadway and Spring St. A total of thirteen windows and two front doors were given a white gold leaf gilded treatment on the first floor and silver and black vinyl decals for the second story. Mitch applied a bit of texture to the matte centers of the logos and urls, while creating a mirrored and thin black painted outline for each. And being that gold leaf gilding is such an intense and laborious process, the project was completed in just under seven days (which is pretty much also the amount of time they amazingly put together the whole store).
Ben Skinner, an artist as well as the company’s visual display lead, and his team beautified each window with crazy animatronic dinosaurs, tropical plants, squishy lava, and floating butterflies. They are really gorgeous and we find the signs and displays complement one another quite nicely!
More signs for Plum Pizzeria. They loved the first sign we made for them so much, they wanted two more - a painted sign on the glass door and a hanging/blade wood sign to catch the eyes of the East Village’s foot traffic. It was fun for us to give a full sign treatment, creating the most out of the restaurant’s storefront.
We were excited when Jon Contino (also the maker of the BK Circus logo we gilded) got in touch with us for a new design project he was working on in Greenpoint. Silk Road Cycles is a new bike shop on Franklin Ave. run by some super knowledgeable bike guys. We hashed out our proposal for the sign, which also ultimately made its way into the brand’s final look!
Paying attention to those oh so important little details, Mitch stained the wood board and rounded its corners, then painted and distressed Jon’s brilliant logo onto it. Matching a rusty bracket to hang the “old” sign, we also welded a sprocket, from what was a vintage bike from the 70’s, onto the tip. And the best part is that it spins! Let’s hope the wind can push it into doing this once in awhile.
Our good friend, Greg, a chef and entrepreneur is launching a new (Russian) baked goods business in New York. For his company, built with friend Alexander, Mitch created this fancy logo piece derived from 19th century influences.
No, not the Spock guy (Leonard Nimoy) as we intially mistakened, but LeRoy Neiman, a popular American artist celebrated his 90′th birthday at Franklin Bowles Gallery in SoHo.
In association with Concord Painting, Mitch hand painted this sign for the party using acrylic paint, which allows the gallery to easily transition to their next event.
apl is a new bar and restaurant on Orchard Street in the Lower East Side (a neighborhood where we believe sit the highest concentration of our signs!). The interior was designed by Steve Lewis, a NYC party icon, while the wallpaper was taken from Shephard Fairey’s archives.
They wanted a “silver” sign so we gave them white gold leaf gilding through our not so secret favorite combination of matte and mirrored sheens. We recommended to add a decorative but subtle frosted film throughout the top windows, but because of the bright colors and patterns apl already has plenty of inside, the owners wanted to keep the exterior simpler. Maybe they’ll have a change of heart later.
Anticipating thousands of visitors flocking to the first annual Festival of Ideas by the New Museum, the owner of pizza joint, Motorino, found a convenient tactic to announce his upcoming restaurant situated right next door to the museum. Armed with white paint, okMitch executed the lettering work created by Laura Palese onto the temporary plywood, which is to be torn down late this summer.
