Daily Archives: December 12, 2017

Maloney Concrete Sign Design

At the Maloney Concrete plant in Bethesda, MD there was an iconic lettered sign up high on both sides of the main tower of the plant. The beautiful Art Deco lettering was painted red at one point and really stood out  among all the industrial machinery that surrounded it.

Maloney Concrete, early 1980s. M. Vurek photo.
The Maloney plant, with the deco lettering painted red. Photo by M. Vurek, early 1980s.

I plan on modeling one face of this concrete loading hopper and as such need to include the gorgeous sign. Unfortunately the font is different than anything I have. The font “Broadway” is a close match but has significant differences. I contacted a friend who also confirmed my suspicions about its design and decided to draw it myself using Adobe Illustrator. The process was not too bad as most of the letters are geometric and consistent. Thankfully there’s some repetition, too.

Maloney Concrete sign drawing
my re-drawing of the Maloney Concrete sign in Bethesda, MD

My plan is to laser engrave this onto a piece of very thin wood which I will then paint and install in the model, eventually. This is a first draft, so comments are welcome!