2022 FASTSIGNS Wide Format & Signage Project of the Year

The winner of this year’s FASTSIGNS/Wide Format & Signage Project of the Year is FASTSIGNS York (Pa.), whose major rebranding of the Shippensburg University football team’s training facility caught the judges’ eyes.

FASTSIGNS York was founded in 2004, when owner Jon Toy and his wife relocated to the area from Texas. Early on, Toy decided he wanted to focus on the higher education market.

“We circled a radius of about an hour-and-a-half from where we were located and identified what colleges and universities were in the area and started literally cold-calling them,” Toy said.

It was a strategy that bore fruit, and one early cold call was to Shippensburg University, located about an hour’s drive from York.

“We developed a good relationship with the athletic department and have been working with the athletic director and assistant athletic director,” Toy said. “It started with something simple and just grew into more and more.”

Although FASTSIGNS York specializes in higher education—they also do work for York College of Pennsylvania and Penn State York (which won FASTSIGNS Project of the Year in 2017)—they also do work for the warehouse and distribution industry, as well as healthcare.

But colleges and universities are where they shine.

The first projects FASTSIGNS York did for Shippensburg University involved hanging banners in the gym to highlight championship-winning years across all the university’s sports teams.

“Then it evolved into, ‘Hey, can we do this? Can we do that?’ So we’ve done work for the football stadium, the softball field, the baseball field and the locker rooms,” said Toy. “They just trusted us as we’ve gone along for creative ideas.”

The current project came about as part of the football program’s recruiting drive.

“Five or six years ago, we put some murals up in the football coaches’ offices and they loved it,” Toy said. “It was right where the recruits walked in, and it was a beautiful picture on a wall of the stadium.”

Fast forward to 2021, when the football program started remodeling its athletic facilities and locker room.

“They wanted us to help design stuff from scratch,” said Toy.

The football program worked closely with FASTSIGNS York’s Visual Communications Expert Kelli Grim, who made multiple site visits and reviews with the client.

Starting from rough drawings and construction images of what the renovated facilities would look like, the FASTSIGNS York team started brainstorming ideas.

FASTSIGNS York’s Creative Director Corey Fahnestock took the ball and ran with it. There were a few tweaks and changes and finally they had a set of photos and designs that everybody was happy with. Installation started the second week of June and was completed by the end of the month.

The project included a mix of printed materials and constructed signage. Dimensional Dibond letters on the outside of the football locker room identified the building, while inside the locker room vinyl covered the concrete walls. They applied perforated vinyl to the windows in the tunnel area and IJ180 vinyl to the red walls in the locker area.

One element the athletic director was eager to include from the get-go was an “honor wall” to highlight Shippensburg players who had gone on to the NFL. For this wall, they added a dimensional NFL logo made with brushed Max-metal and black acrylic, while smaller placards made of clear acrylic with brushed Max-metal and brushed standoffs, recognized the individual players.

They used vinyl to wrap a column and applied perforated vinyl to the office windows. In the gym, they hung fabric banners highlighting championship years.

Wayfinding PVC signs marked the office areas and doors. Near the locker rooms, they added spring-back banner stands with 10 oz. banners, and in the pool room, they used banners, Max-metal and perforated vinyl. In the weight room they wrapped columns with IJ180 vinyl, perforated vinyl, and acrylic with standoffs.

Finally, the windows on the front entrance of the building were covered with perforated vinyl.

It was finished in time for college football season, and the university was wowed by how it all came out.

“One of the prior projects we’d done that gave them the idea that we could do this was for the soccer and softball teams,” said Toy. “We kind of already wowed them once with some ideas, and this one just took it to the next level for them.”

In fact, they are now talking about another athletic facilities project, this time for the baseball team.

“I don't think it’ll be this scope, but we’ll certainly be putting some new things in there to help them spruce it up a little bit.”

Runners Up

This year’s second-place winner was FASTSIGNS Manchester (Conn.), for their brand awareness campaign for South Windsor, Conn.’s TruNORTH Construction.

The owner of TruNORTH Construction wanted to better showcase the growing construction business, improve brand awareness, and position the company for greater success in the future.

Joel Miller, Krissy Sullivan and the 396 Team at FASTSIGNS Manchester helped TruNORTH provide a unified visual message for the construction brand, with elements of the project including not just signage and other display graphics, but also lawn signs, H-frames and posts, and panel signs at every project site, along with the vehicle graphics on his company fleet. Other elements include office wall graphics, helmet decals and foam boards for presentations. All of these elements helped boost sales and project interest.

This year’s third-place winner was FASTSIGNS Eugene (Ore.) for their branding of a college student housing complex.

The Flats @ Chase is a new student housing apartment community in Eugene, near the University of Oregon. They wanted to brand their property with signage and graphics that were as unique and modern as the complex itself in order to attract student residents away from the competition.

Led by owner Peter Knight-Sheen, FASTSIGNS Eugene undertook the project, which included a large monument sign incorporated into an outdoor concrete slab that identifies the property from a distance, exterior building signs, address letters, and branded welcome mats are all integrated into the décor. Wall murals were installed throughout the interior of the property transforming common areas with different designs, including vibrant murals displaying images from the University of Oregon. The signs and graphics showcase their modern branding and reflect the University’s heritage, while increasing awareness of the property to attract local students.

Congratulations to all the winners of this year’s Project of the Year!