TRAFFIC SIGNAL BOX DESIGN

Like many other communities across the country, our town is asking area artists to create designs to decorate metal, traffic, signal boxes.  These unsightly, metal boxes are located at intersections to house the electronics necessary to run traffic lights.

Lots of places have had local artists paint directly on these metal boxes but ours is going to reproduce selected designs on vinyl wraps that will be attached to the box.  I required my second, third and fourth year students to all create original designs for our town's contest.  Our community is going to select three designs for the first three wraps.  They plan to add additional wraps as funds become available.

Like so many assignments, I did a demonstration piece along with my students.  I deliberately used student grade materials (Crayola colored pencils and Sharpie markers) to show my students what they could do with inexpensive supplies.  I decided to go ahead and finish my design and throw it into the contest, too.  The vinyl wrap will go around all four sides of the box and the top.  I took the measurements our city office provided and enlarged them so my students had a template to work on.  

My design was inspired by vintage postcards popular in the 1950's.  I don't know of any similar design used for my town so I invented my own.  Like other vintage postcards, I included landmarks inside the block letters which spell out my town's name "Guymon."  I included the local grain elevator, our county courthouse, the marque on the community theater on main street, a bronc rider representing our nationally ranked rodeo, the clock located at our centennial park and one of our many water towers.  I also included the livestock, crops and flowers that are raised here.  The last touch was an oil pumper which dots the fields around our town.  Since my design will wrap around the box (if selected) I drew the red ribbon behind the letters so it continued from the front around to the back panel.