Last year I was curious about how are made neons so I asked my colleague if he had an idea and an idea he had ! He showed me that fascinating documentary about asian guys handcrafting neons. If you have 11min, just take a look at that video !

Thank you my friend Toki-Woki (website) you are the best developer on earth. People has to know that.

I decided that I wanted a neon for my own band : Révérence. I asked my other friend Luc Borho (website), best designer on earth if you could design me a custom logo which could be good as a neon. The letters had to be linked for example.

This is what he drew :

And it was perfect for me !

It was high time I thought about how to realize that sign.

As you can see the result is very very cool ! Let me tell you how I achieved it.

The Neon:

I found on the internet a smart wire that is called EL-Wire, for ElectroLuminescent Wire. It is very flexible and thin. You can put it everywhere you want and you can power it with a battery or a classic power supply. It does not use a lot of energy and it does not heat up.
One more good point ? Of course! It costs almost nothing !

I got mine from here : the ugliest website of the decade.

The Support:

I bought 3 black foam bords for 6€ and it was done!

That one is yellow I know. At a time, I wanted a yellow board with a blue neon. I changed my mind

Let’s cook !

I had the logo, the neon and the board.
I printed the logo on three A4 that I taped together. Then I taped them on the board and I started to cut the board with a cutter following the printed lines.

Sometimes, for the R and accent on the E, I could not have a linked line so I made a hole at the ends of the lines to put my el-wire in to make it reappeared from behind.

I put some glue in the rails I had cut in the foam board. Then in that rail I slided in the thin strip of the el-wire. That strip is very convenient and allows you to glue the el-wire almost everywhere.

And after some tricky part when I had to bend the wire, the loop of the small “r” for example, everything was glued and at the good place. Here is the result:

I bring it to every show we have and it has a lot of success each time !

Here is a picture taken during one our show, there is no post fx. No filter !

You can check some sound of the band here : myreverence.com

Have a good day !