Bright light or fading star?

Looking backwards over time’s shoulder, some sources of informed opinion suggest that there have been a number of epoch-making revolutions in the sign industry.
 
Most recently, the advent of practical digital printing is one such epoch defining event that’s beyond dispute and that has touched practically every practitioner in the industry and beyond into others converging with it.
 
Back further still, in the early eighties, the world’s first computerised vinyl cutting systems made a massive impact on the industry and much of the supplier landscape today is defined around demand that sprang up in the wake of the new technology that was then introduced and that is still huge today.
 
Back yet again and materials find a place in the revolution roster too. Acrylic sheet, Perspex for example, changed the signscape forever and the material’s use continues to this day behind an ever-expanding wake of creative and colourful applications.



The first revolution though, arguably, happened shortly after the first neon tube was bent, pumped and powered. Signs suddenly emerged from the gloom and were born in a new form. Painted, lit boards suddenly had competition and the epoch well and truly hit its stride.

Neon is a very powerful medium. It is iconic, in and of itself, and for many it represents ‘the’ defining essence of signs and signing. Its use and application has ranged from installations on a scale that lights up the expanse of the visible horizon with a scribble of bright, colourful and highly animated light; to small signs that identify premises’ purpose with unambiguous anti-brands like ‘bar’ or ‘club’ while casting whole districts’ sexuality in a pool of pink-red light.



Neon of course emits light from within rather than requiring illumination. Unlike modern light sources though that are simply wired up to a power supply and come alive at the flick of a switch, neon holds a position that could be described as ‘different’. Anyone with a desire to get light out of a neon tube, has first to get time invested in a steep but fascinating learning curve and has to master some new skills along the way.

Without time served in the learning, the best anyone can hope to get out of the raw materials comprising ‘neon’ is a pile of what might easily look like a pile of collapsed, glassy intestines. Do that well though and neon becomes high-art. If he is really lucky, the would-be neon sign artist might get a flicker of light out of his work but, for neon to burst into life, time must be invested in the learning of its subtleties.

Invented here

Neon, as we know it, traces its roots to the invention of a French engineer, Georges Claude. Claude patented the invention and his patent taught the use of other gasses including argon and vapours of mercury to extract more colours from the medium than could be coerced out of neon gas alone.
 
In the 1920s, the idea was taken further by coating tubes with fluorescent powders which, when exited by a dose of UV, emitted colour. The gamut was expanded further with phosphors in the 1950s that yielded many more colours and in time came to give the world colour TVs too. To stand and behold a sign of the era, working and in situ would have seen people open-mouthed. Its beauty transcends the technology. The sense of occasion it imparts is exciting and palpable. If it could be bottled, it would sell in huge volumes.

O Factoid: Neon as we know it today was invented by French engineer Georges Claude. O

It is doubtful whether there ever has been or ever will be a medium quite as evocative of place and era as real-deal neon. Think Las Vegas for example and thoughts turn to a vista bathed in neon’s light everywhere you turn. Rudimentary animation serves to cut through the very static that neon itself creates in Vegas-like venues and gets its moving message across. And while it is fragile, not the easiest thing to work with, and is relatively specialised in its application, one thing that is impossible to do with neon though is ignore it.


Given all the craft-based and technical challenges that stand between the desire to bend a glass tube into a letter-shape and then to extract light from it, there should be no surprise that neon has attracted would be imitators and heirs to its throne in the many hundreds. The overwhelming majority have risen for a time, then crashed and burned.

Blacked out

Among the supposed alternative technologies offered to the world, a number were polarised around ‘black-light’. Certain inclusions that can be added to plastic master-batch materials will fluoresce in the presence of black light and so efforts were made to use these to create a neon substitute. Did it work? Well, sort of.

Signs were made using black light systems by forming or bending coloured plastic tubes or rods and holding them in the deformed state. Given the challenges of bending hollow glass tubes, the bendy plastic variant certainly threw a major punch. Anyone, literally anyone, can or could bend a cooperative plastic tube.

The bent, or to put it more charitably, formed plastic tubes were then glued, or otherwise retained, on a field of darkly contrasting plastic, usually acrylic. This ‘back-tray’ terminated along one its edges with a rolled-over concealment for a fluorescent black light and a rudimentary reflector. With the sign developed to this point, the whole assembly was connected to a source of power and turned on.

The basic idea was that the formed plastic tubes would glow strongly against the dark background, they did. The contrast provided would make the tubes stand out visually, they did. Taken as a whole, signs made this way should look like neon, they did not. They looked like assemblies made from formed plastics owning little or nothing to neon. So, neon sailed on in a position of relative exclusivity untroubled by black light and wave upon wave of other would-be technologies.

More developments

The story that leads to the development of a more modern arrival on neon’s illuminated stage known as NeonPlus is told comically and very creatively on the company’s website but the facts and the outcome of its originators efforts are remarkable in and of themselves. Developed by The Sign Group, based in Morley near Leeds, NeonPlus achieves some of what neon itself achieves—but takes its own medium forward and ahead by defining its own space somewhat off the stage neon commands.

NeonPlus owes nothing to Claude except maybe the provision of the creative stimulus need to try to do something better. Could NeonPlus be confused with ‘real’ neon? Not to ex-pert eyes, but in many of its variants, yes it could. Is it actually ‘better’ than neon? Depends what you mean by better.

As convincing as it is, NeonPlus will require retrograde engineering to closely simulate neon in every respect. With that in mind, its manufacturers have contrived little embellishments like wire ties that have no functional basis just to get a look evocative of neon’s era.



The technology that beats at the heart of NeonPlus is LED driven. Abandon now though any preconceived ideas about LEDs and what is possible using them. Performance envelopes are there to be pushed. Limiting rules are there to be broken. NeonPlus seems to do both.



NeonPlus comprises novel machined assemblies fabricated as only a time-served and well equipped sign-maker/craftsman knows how, and cleverly designed and deployed LEDs to illuminate those assemblies from with-in. Flick the switch on NeonPlus and you have something that’s technically capable of competing with neon as a means of illuminating channel letters, but that in many application designs actually is the channel letter. It also does a very good job in the role conventional neon fills in the raw state. It’s convincing, bright and beautiful.

NeonPlus then gives anyone with a desire to use neon in a wide swath of neon’s roles, a very credible substitute. It is a substitute that does not compromise much except some subtleties and one that actually makes life when specifying, designing, and installing quite easy.

Colour in the NeonPlus world is a dialled-in value. Whatever it is possible for RGB light to emit when mixed, can be achieved with NeonPlus. If you want to hit a colour that is not in the shops, then chances are that a few tweaks will give you what you want if you ask nicely of NeonPlus.

LEDs are essentially low voltage devices. Chances are that machined plastic assemblies and solid state light sources are also going to arrive on site in one piece. Whack a NeonPlus sign and you will do little harm. Whack a neon sign and it is lights out in a very literal sense.

NeonPlus illuminates everything including its own way ahead. Because of the way it is made, and the materials it is made from, it also avoids some of neon’s idiosyncrasies.



NeonPlus is not something that just anyone can make, in that sense it is not an improvement on neon per se. It is a proprietary product of The Sign Group, and the company understands all the subtleties that make it what it is. Getting to that position independently would involve a lot of development effort and considerable expenditure on skills, hardware, and material that are hard—if not impossible—to find.

NeonPlus is though something any sign-maker can buy, at a trade price. Visualise a design and chances are it can be made. If something really off-the-wall is needed, the technology has the legs to carry the idea forward, it is far from constrained. NeonPlus is probably picking up some work that would have traditionally have gone the traditional route. More than that though, it is defining of its own space and creating its own growth within a market that is demanding a next-generation solution where neon cannot or will not fit.

NeonPlus aside, LEDs have made major inroads into neon’s market opportunity simply as a raw light source. LEDs on an obligingly flexible ribbon or cable are easy to route to the extremities of channel letters and there is no getting away from it, neon is not something just anyone can manipulate. Does neon’s eventual demise at the hands of this technology have ‘inevitable’ written all over it? Progress is after all relentless and there is not a market on Earth that will not take what it perceives to be a better deal if there is one available.

Uniquely neon

Neon though is not just a technology that was born of a specific era and is now destined to be outperformed and outclassed. In the very same sense that digital prints will not replace original works, or a modern Mini a classic one, neon too has a place. It has character all its own, unique colourations and accents that can only ever be a product of glowing gasses and excited phosphors. Every subtle and unintended deviation from the shape its creator intended give it a unique fingerprint. That makes it desirable in the face of what some might argue is more practical. That makes it beautiful in the face of what might be free of any flaw. That makes it neon and makes it unique.


Making neon signs is not easy—indeed, nothing that truly rewards ever is. If wrapping can be thought of as a sign-maker’s Everest, then conquering neon would be on the summit push too. Turning straight lengths of glass tubing into flowing neon forms can be conceived or thought of in terms of skill, but it is also fittingly described as art. It is a thing of beauty to behold. What is certain is that the skills needed to make neon need to be learned and carried forward.

Tubular forms in glass have a stable structure. Heat them beyond the glass transition stage though and they are decidedly unstable. To stop a heated tube simply collapsing to the point where its opposite walls touch when it is being formed, the internal pressure in the tube must be raised. That is done by inflating the tube with nothing more than a breath. All that overcomes the tube’s will to balloon out of parallel is the skill of the artist who is doing the blowing.



Introducing one bend in a glass tube that is glowing cherry-red with heat is one thing. Introducing several and managing the excess length and the parts already bent requires an expert touch. Words will describe it so it could be distilled to an instruction manual and handed to someone. Reducing it to practice though soon makes the purpose of the book futile. It has be tried, failure must be experienced, eventual success celebrated and greatly valued.

Once a rigid tube has been turned against the will of the material into the flowing form of an element that will ultimately comprise part of a neon sign, the tube has to be further worked so as to retain the gas that will either excite the phosphor or glow from within itself. Electrodes have to be fixed, impurities in the tube evacuated and the gas and other agents introduced.

Looking for all the world like a turn-of-the-century mad-scientist’s reanimation apparatus, the tools of the neon-maker’s trade are arcane in the extreme. All they do is get the job done, the only way the world knows or has ever known of getting the job done. Wrapped up in the refusal of neon to be automated on a truly industrial scale—or submit to technology’s will to make its manufacturing easy—is the part of the basis of its appeal. Neon would not be neon if anyone could do it. It would just be glowing glass tubing with all the ambience of a fluorescent light.

As long as it is green

Getting life and light out of something as inert as glass and as reactive as gas involves the use of some agents that a world intent on going green frowns upon and attempts to legislate against.

Locked up in an airtight glass tube that will be responsibly disposed of, these agents pose no threat to anything, let loose into the environment around us, they have the capacity to do harm. Mercury has to be managed, of that there is no doubt, but so do other materials that widely and readily accepted and are part of other industrial processes and products the world depends upon. Debate will rage and the industry turns to its representatives to argue the case for exemptions and deliver developments that will ensure neon the future it richly deserves.

The future depends as much on there being a demand for neon as it does for the continuing means to produce it. Is there a continuing demand given the weight of alternatives and the challenges anyone with a will to make neon faces? The answer has to be an emphatic ‘yes’.


Like most products that come to dominate a niche, however big that niche might be, neon is immune to any assault when the spec calls for neon and accepts no substitute. Neon in that role simply has to be the real deal. The very fact that so many alternatives have set out to emulate neon is testament to the fact that it embodies truly unique appeal.

Stacked up against what might be regarded as its competition, neon actually fares very well. It is not an energy hog, it is not hostile to the life around it and it is long-lived and economical. It is exposed though to an overwhelming amount of assertive pressure from competing interests that its relatively small number of proponents would find difficult to face down.

Neon though does not need to take its battle to any particular front to fight because the fact is, it is unchallenged on the ground it genuinely owns. Neon’s position is thus defended by those who have a commercial interest in its continuing success, but that is only part of the motivation that keeps it shining. The balance of the energy that is dedicated to neon is fuelled by its makers’ passion.

It has to be neon

There are customers out there for a product that absolutely and positively has to be neon and nothing other. There are suppliers dedicated to supplying that demand. One such supplier is The Neon Workshop based in Wakefield and run by Richard Wheater. The Neon Workshop is a specialist in the manufacture and development of neon lighting.

More than just a manufacturer, Richard Wheater is also a committed advocate for neon and an evangelist on its behalf. Part of The Neon Workshop’s offering to the world is a programme of learning. Anybody fascinated by neon and driven enough to want to learn how to make it can do so at The Neon Workshop. No experience is needed, and the prices are very reasonable at around £300.

This really is not much for a memorable experience in this day and age and that is exactly what is delivered. The basis idea is that you can enter the course with nothing more than an idea in your head and with no real idea of what is involved in taking that idea forward and making it a reality realised in neon.

From that position, the transcription of ideas into the working drawings needed to work with neon is taught. Bearing in mind that this is a one day course, you can have a go at physically doing the glass work yourself or, if you want, Richard Wheater will lend you his experience. The prices includes all the hardware you need to make your sign light up and the gas you will use. It sounds like a bargain and it is.



If you are ‘bitten’ and want to make neon part of your commercial offering, The Neon Workshop makes its considerable resources available to rent which of course greatly eases the cost of entry. What you will find once you walk into the pool of neon’s light, is a core of like-minded people all very keen on seeing that neon’s star keeps glowing.

For £75 you could instead experience a real immersion in neon and watch open-mouthed as someone else demonstrates what neon is, what it can be, and how to make it. Be warned though, the moment you see someone expert in the art effortlessly working the glass into the gorgeous flowing forms that characterise neon so well, you will want to get your hands on some and try yourself. You will be bitten and many are.

The motivation that drives the production of art using what is primarily intended for commercial enterprises, such as making works using wide-format inkjet printers is not a new idea. Neon made that leap eons ago. Neon as an art form attracts much interest and The Neon Workshop also represent this well.

Neon’s future, the shape and size of its niche, industry, market—call it what you will—is anybody’s call. People buy things for reasons that they choose, always have and always will. So whether you are in the camp that brokers no substitute or one that says technology is going to extinguish demand for neon, chances are that you each have an element of truth in your argument.

If neon were to vanish, signing would have lost one of its very defining essences and that would be a tragic shame. For now, neon shines as high art. The product of a skill-set that can still be learned and satisfying a market that values what is truly unique. The next time your eye alights on a neon sign, take away from it more than the simple impression it forms. Look at it and see the purpose and effort that was invested in its making. It is a thing to admire.


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