Creative Edge Excels at Producing School & Corporate Logos for a Lasting Impression
Joel Davis
Feature Contributor
Photos courtesy of Creative Edge Master Shop
Creative Edge Master Shop is helping universities and colleges to make their mark in history by permanently inlaying logos into the stone used in school facilities.
The techniques used by the company provide permanence and nearly unlimited design flexibility for customers. “Our main tool is waterjets,” President Jim Belilove said. “We fabricate every kind of floor covering there is from hard surface to granite.”
Each year, Creative Edge reaches out to schools and colleges about its logo-related services. “Every school has a logo — from the Tigers to the Vikings to the Hornets, whatever,” Belilove said.
Inlaid logos can used in high-traffic entryways, atriums, central courtyards, hall ways and gymnasium entrances.
“Typically, we’re working in a lobby,” Belilove said. “That’s where they want the logo, the emblem of their school. Generally, (it ranges in size) from four feet to 10 feet in diameter. I don’t have any limitations on how big we can make it, but that’s the normal range. We could make it as big as they wanted it to be.”
The logos can be inlaid into almost any kind of stone using the company’s computer-controlled waterjet cutting process. The waterjets use a high-pressure stream of water mixed with garnet sand to precisely cut a wide spectrum of materials.
The use of waterjets has many advantages over other techniques, Belilove said. “I don’t think there really are any other processes to get a logo into stone other than sandblasting, but they are definitely limited to one color.”
The typical process does not accommodate the use of color. “Sandblasting is usually how stone has been engraved with letters or logos, but what we actually do with waterjets is we inlay it,” Belilove said. “We’re inlaying different materials in the field stone. Those are typically other stones or metal.”
The treatment is naturally tough. “It is just as durable as the stone,” Belilove said.
Once an image is cut into the stone with the use of waterjets, Creative Edge artisans fill it with durable material of a range of different colors.
“There is an unlimited range of colors,” Belilove said. “It changes the game at lot. It’s quite wonderful. If it’s a granite floor, we’re going to put granite it in it. If it’s a marble floor, we’ll put marble in it. There are exceptions if the color isn’t right. The metals we use are brass, bronze, or stainless steel.”
For example, Creative Edge inlaid a logo in Buckner Clay Hall for the University of Virginia School of Law in granite with slate and bronze.
“You can get some pretty elaborate details,” Belilove said. “Waterjets can not only cut the letters but all the details in the logo. The really interesting thing for schools is they can get a very faithful reproduction of their emblem and with all the details correctly represented. There is no compromise.”
Waterjets are an affordable, alternative cutting method for stone that allow complex shapes and intricate designs that would not otherwise be possible to produce.
Other techniques simply do not all the same fidelity and resolution as the use of waterjets. “In terrazzo, they have to bend the metal,” Belilove said. “You don’t get all the edges and corners don’t exactly match.”
The inlaying process means that schools do not have to be satisfied with monochromatic emblems in the stone. “You get can a lot of color,” Belilove said. “You can get the full glory of the emblem reproduced, in any kind of stone. We can work with the thermal finish, the rough finish, or polished finish or anything in between. Some of the nice logos combine the thermal finish with the polished finish. That is an interesting effect as well.
Another Creative Edge project involved inlaying a series of seven versions of the University of Kansas University Jayhawk mascot mirroring its changes over time.
“The Jayhawk is their emblem,” he said. “It started 1908 and evolved over the years. That was an interesting one.”
This is the same technology used to produce Creative Edge Master Shop’s map of the Broadway theaters found in Times Square in New York City.
Called “Spotlight on Broadway,” the installation, which was completed in December 2013, indicates the location of each Broadway theater in metal and granite. They were fabricated at Creative Edge Master Shop’s facility in Iowa.
It is cut into three-inch granite. The letters are made of quarter-inch stainless steel.
More than 330,000 pedestrians will walk by and over the map each day, a testimony to the resilience of the materials and technique used by Creative Edge.
Creative Edge was also called upon to fabricate the new logo for the Coverings show in late April in Las Vegas, Belilove said. “We did the Coverings logo this year because it was a new design. It is made of Statuario marble slab and glazed ceramic tile and shows the new 2015 Coverings logo.”
This has not been the only collaboration with the show. “We have collaborated with Coverings in the past to make permanent art made from the hard surfaces displayed at Coverings as gifts to the Coverings venues,” Belilove said.
McCormick Place received a stone and stainless steel skyline of Chicago. It is mounted in the interior at the head of the north escalator.
The Orange County Convention Center of Orlando, Florida, received a brightly colored porcelain mural with a stainless steel overlay. It was mounted on the exterior at the southern entrance.
The vibrant, multicolored frame of the new Coverings logo is represented in ceramic tile and is inset within a solid slab field of polished white marble. The new tile-and-stone logo has been produced in a 24-inch x 28-inch transportable frame.
The Fairfield, Iowa-based Creative Edge has been using waterjet cutting technology to produce fine, intricate work in stone and countless other materials for 25-plus years. It is the largest shop of its kind in the industry. It has a 125,000 square foot production facility that produces 50-to-100 projects every month. Its fabrication shop contains an arsenal of 14 Flow International waterjets. For more information, or to see a slide show of school logo projects, visit www.cec-waterjet.com/blogs .