Links Signs and Graphics does full creative justice to a brilliant business nearby in Lytham St Annes…

When you’ve been in business as long as Links Sign and Graphics, and the popularity of your work and services make you the go-to locally for commercial signage of all shapes and sizes, it’s a statistical certainty that you’ll have seen it all, or something close to that, in terms of the customers coming your way looking for help promoting a venture.

The Kobold’s Kettle, a recent arrival in Lytham St Annes, has put paid to that idea. The team at Links had never seen the like before. 

The Kobolds Kettle is a wonderful business that gets people past its doors and together on a pretext other than shopping. It’s a simply wonderful, cozy gaming café and a place no less than perfect to rekindle the love of an old game or try something new. Failing that, and, let’s be honest, who could, you could indulge a love of loose teas, coffee, and delicious cakes among other things. The Kobold’s Kettle is a warm and inviting space for everyone - and that includes this writer who intends to visit.

The founder of the business came to Links Signs and Graphics to discuss signage and ambient décor and branding with the team, and with very definite ideas of what they wanted. The creative prescription included myriad inputs from the worlds known best to gamers, a wonderful, stylised Kobold who’s the star of the branding, and lettering grounding the brand itself. For the most part, Links Signs work was centred around printing the resources comprising the brief, the lettering though needed work to scale it elegantly and to retain the intended design, colouring and inter-character layout.

The lettered elements of the characterful fascia signage comprise faces printed on Metamark MD5-A laminated with the MD-Class digital films MG-700 Gloss. These are applied to profile-cut, gold acrylic letters fitted with stand-off locators to enhance the dimensional aspect. The Kobold is immortalised in a cut profile rendered in 5mm thick black Foamex, again covered in a printed MD5-A laminated face with more chunky stand-offs in recognition of his authority over the sign.

The all up impression and effect is wonderfully in-gear with the business and its intent. It’s playful and yet realised with quality and authority that serves to differentiate it from all that surrounds it, and it works with the proportions of the shop front. 

Inside the shop, and in the midst of all it does, wall graphics abound, and these were printed on Metamark MD5-H High-Tack with a matt laminate. Links Signs and Graphics will be returning to site to upgrade some of the graphics with dimensional elements, reflecting the character and construction of the logo.

Gaming minus the PlayStation, X-Box or whatever has been around in one form or another for longer that anyone can say with certainty and authority. It’s a reflection of a human faculty for invention and imagination. It’s also an acknowledgment that we’re sociable beings and that we like to gather with others of the same persuasion.

When you have a business that’s so hard coded to such a fundamental range of human instincts, it deserves to succeed. In the case of The Kobold’s Kettle, it’s getting a massive lift from its superb signage to help it on its way.

Kobold - Wikipedia