Making a stencil banner…

The Southeast Organic Co-op needed a logo that reflected it’s character, while also telling you about what kind of organics they are dealing with. Since they are volunteer-run, and exist to bring organic fruits and veggies to Southeast Houston, I designed this logo:

I designed this to look like a stencil so that DIY banners, signs, screen-printing could easily take place without changing the look of the logo.

So when it came time to actually make large banners for the co-op, instead of uploading the logo to a printer and paying $200-300 for banners, I decided to but the logo to the test, and make a 3′ x 3′ stencil on matte board.

Here’s how I did it.

Step 1:

Print the logo on a transparency. This was more difficult than I anticipated since transparencies are harder to find than I thought they would be. But the print shop at Office Depot had a couple that they sold me for $0.10 each.

Step 2:

Blow it up on the matte board.

Step 3:

Trace it. This took about 1.5 hours.

Step 4:

Cut it out. This took 3 days.

I don’t have any pictures of the finished and painted signs, but we sprayed them a dark green on white, and then sprayed the tips of the artichoke a dark purple, and they look great.