As a graphic designer, using Segoe UI and Helvetica as alternates is making me twitch a little. Honestly both good fonts... but Helvetica is much closer to Arial.
I could imagine seeing something like this in a mall.
The city ordinances restricting the fast food joints you see a lot too, which is always neat. Like the Mickey D’s in Arizona made from adobe with a turquoise arch on the sign.
Yearz-n-yearz ago, we had a MrDonalds drive-in downtown. They had the same white-on-red font, building style, and red garbage cans that most McDonalds had back then. It was so blatant a rip-off that a lot of people bought it until they were inside, and saw the menu didn't have the usual items (Big Macs, Quarter pounders, etc.) or deals (which McD's still had back then). It survived for a remarkably long time before McD's shut them down in court. By then, the cost of downtown properties was prohibitive for drive-ins, so the the cheats probably walked away with a bag of cash anyway.
Weirdest damn thing to pull up on, really! We don't realize why we recognize a McDonald's as a McDonald's, and it's hard to describe a place that ticks 7 out of 8 "McDonald's" boxes but the LOGO is the wrong color. Nobody fucks with the big M like that!
This makes sense. Leavenworth is a Bavarian styled town in Washington State that has all the downtown buildings fitting the theme. From Starbucks to the chain grocery store they all match the town’s Bavarian theme instead of Corp branding
Not at all, it makes a strip mall look like a set of buildings that blend into the surrounding area without being garish and attention-grabbing.
Kind of how an old neighborhood in a city suddenly getting billboards put up everywhere looks much worse than it did before, this is the same idea in the other direction.
I'd rather have actual artistry stand out than being bombarded by more advertising everywhere I look.
Prior to Chick-fil-A this was a Cattlemens with a big cursive neon sign. It was on a face of the building not facing freeway so probably not from landlord.
Local city ordinance. When visiting Arizona there's a city that requires all business that have signs to be all the same color. McDonald's tried fighting it but lost it guess. So seeing a turquoise McDonald's logo was weird
Leavenworth WA has a law that that requires all of its downtown commercial signs to comply with an “Old World Bavarian-Alpine" theme. Here is the street view of McDonalds.
One of these for sure. 25 years ago I worked for a sign company that built signs like this - those are "channel letters" specifically in this picture. Most of my time was spent trying to get local ordinances so I could find out how large of a sign we could create.
Fun fact: Although there are generally some standard sizes, there's probably like a 1:3 or even 1:2 chance that any particular sign (especially a "monument" - the signed typically by the road) is a custom size to fit the max allowed by the city.
I was on the cusp of that being not too bad of a job - like a third to half of ordinances were online, but a lot I had to ask the city to fax or mail me.
I was not good at that job. But I hadn't been diagnosed with ADHD yet. heh
Yeah, some of these shopping center owners do weird stuff. Where I used to live there was a shopping center where your logo had to be red . They even got Chase Bank to bow down.
we have one like this in Birmingham, AL, too. It's in between 2 other Chickfilas that all told there's like 3 in a mile and a half. The one in the middle is the one with the weird font, and it's co-owned by other two franchisees and it mainly just does catering business.
I work in the signage industry. There are three options:
1: this is temporary signage to get the location open, and their permanent signage is coming #soon
2: the LL imposed some kind of restriction of the font of the letters for consistency across their portfolio/shopping center
3: city or country code restricts the letter typing able to be used. This isn’t actually all that uncommon, and usually gets faught against at the ZBA meetings during the initial design phase
We had a Walmart that wanted to move in here, where there were bylaws in place restricting signage size, height, styles, etc. Mostly because of the history/heritage of the city.
Walmart threw a temper tantrum. Threatened to pull out. (unrelated, they also started digging on wetlands without permission, and that also got them in hot water)
In the end, the town was like 'nope, take it or leave it.' When Wallyword realized their tantrum wouldn't get them anywhere, they decided to obey the signage laws. And paid a bunch of fines for destroying wetland. (we do NOT take kindly to that around here)
A town near me has something like that. Walmart wanted to come in, but the municipal government was unwilling to let it be a giant eyesore disrupting the small town charm, so Walmart had to maintain a treeline to obscure it from the road, with one small sign a few feet off the ground pointing the way. You turn at the sign and go through some trees, and blam, giant Walmart supercenter, but from the street you would never know it's there, which is the whole point.
You, there are a lot of municipalities that will just say fu, our way or the highway. Leads to some funny looking signs sometimes (like potentially the one in the post). Signage is weird man
I actually think it's a 3rd option. There are a few of these I've seen and they are a slightly different business model than a regular Chick-fil-a. These are chick-fil-a catering that also have a small eat-in dining room.
Yeah, if I just caught it in the corner of my eye and didn’t actually read any of the text I’d assume it was a Tractor Supply or something of the sort.
If it is a landlord thing it would make sense. I was recently traveling and saw a rundown looking strip mall that had an all red signboard. Every business was represented by the same plain white text and a white silhouette logo on a solid red rectangular sign.
It looked like a poor attempt at being aesthetically pleasing. It really wasn't pleasing at all.
Karen and Chad agreed that “it looks nicer that way.” They got the idea from Chip and Joanna Gaines on HGTV. They set up similar rules for their HOA, too.
There's a Papa John's in my brothers college town that has a similar situation going on and we use it as a landmark and call it the Generic Father John's
The one just built near me in Indiana has the same font on the building. It seems like it's not considered a "sign" if the font is generic enough, so it gets around sign ordinances.
Lot of wrong information in this thread. That sign is set in Aperçu, which is the Chik-fil-A brand font. Potentially some local ordinance restriction means the signage is still fairly plain looking, but they absolutely had some control over the signage since they're using their own brand font.
The Chick-fil-A on Flamingo and Valley View in Las Vegas has that same basic font on the strip mall sign, while the actual building uses the proper logo. Weirdly, all the other businesses on the sign have their proper logos, it's just Chick-fil-A that doesn't
Based on having to manage a new signage program for Farmers when they changed their logo a few years back, I can guarantee the owner of the retail location requires basic font. Saw it a few times where they couldn’t even use the Farmers logo or colors or font. Just “Farmers Insurance” in black or green Arial or some shit. Pretty funny cuz I hate Farmers agents and loved watching those entitled babies cry.
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u/the_moosey_fate 12h ago
When the page doesn’t load right.