Changelog
Documenting our journey of creating a custom sign builder.
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A quality leap for AI-generated neon sign designs
The AI Sign Designer has taken a significant step forward at converting customer-supplied logos into neon production artwork. When shoppers upload a brand logo and ask for a neon sign, the output now looks like a clean tube layout your shop could quote and build, with the original wordmark, colours, and proportions intact.

What’s Changed
- Brand typography is now preserved exactly - Wordmarks are traced from the original glyphs, so the source font weight, letter spacing, terminals, and curved baselines come through instead of being replaced by a generic neon script
- Source colours map to tube colours - Brand reds, greens, blues, and other colours from the customer’s logo carry through to the neon tubes rather than collapsing to a single white tube
- Backboards and filled badges are stripped out - Solid discs, shields, dark colour fields, and panel backgrounds behind a logo are removed automatically, leaving only the foreground tubes and lettering a sign shop would actually fabricate
- Flat production artwork instead of a glowing preview - Outputs are now unlit, hard-edged, vector-style tube proofs with no halos, bloom, or photographic glow effects, so what you see is what you’d quote
- Taglines and small lettering survive - Thin, light, or widely spaced text is no longer fattened or regularised; small straplines like “The way to grow your business” remain readable and on the right baseline
- Cleaner separation of text and graphics - Letters stay solid filled, while icons, animals, and decorative shapes are rebuilt as sparse tube paths with negative space between them — matching how a real neon sign is built
- More consistent results from the same upload - Neon prompts now run with tighter generation settings, so re-running the same logo produces noticeably less variation between attempts
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Vertical writing for Chinese-Japanese-Korean signs
Sign Customiser now supports proper top-down vertical writing for multilingual signs. Merchants can configure whether vertical columns read right to left or left to right, so customers can type natural multi-line text while the preview and manufacturing output keep the intended layout.

What’s Changed
- Multi-column vertical text - Each typed line becomes its own top-down column, making vertical Japanese, Traditional Chinese, Korean, and traditional Mongolian layouts practical for customer-facing customisers
- Merchant-controlled column direction - Choose right-to-left columns for Japanese, Traditional Chinese, and Korean signs, or left-to-right columns for traditional Mongolian signs
- Natural order details - Cart details, order data, and exports keep the customer’s original typed text instead of replacing it with a generated column representation
- Pricing stays logical - Base line pricing follows the typed input lines while letter charges still apply to each visible character
- Font guidance in settings - The admin settings now remind merchants to upload fonts with the glyph coverage needed for their target language
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Improved cut-to-shape backboard rendering
Sign Customiser’s cut-to-shape backboard has received a major rendering upgrade. Backboards now merge together into a single piece instead of overlapping, the shape hugs much more tightly around your text and logos, and visual artifacts have been significantly reduced. The result is a preview that closely matches what your customers will receive in real life.

What’s Changed
- Merged backboards - Cut-to-shape backboards now combine with adjacent backboards into one unified piece, just like they would be manufactured in real life, rather than awkwardly overlapping
- Tighter shape wrapping - The backboard outline now follows the contours of your letters and shapes much more closely, giving a realistic cut-to-shape appearance
- Reduced visual artifacts - Rendering glitches and edge artifacts have been cleaned up for a smoother, more polished preview
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RGB flow glow effect with spatial gradient animation
Sign Customiser’s Flow RGB effect now produces a beautiful, realistic neon glow that flows across your entire sign. Each word is lit with a smooth colour gradient that shifts naturally based on its position, creating the appearance of real RGB LED tubing cycling through colours in sequence.

What’s Changed
- Multi-layer neon glow - Four glow layers create a rich, realistic neon tube appearance with soft light falloff that closely mimics real RGB LED signage
- Spatial gradient animation - Colours flow smoothly across words based on their position on the canvas, so multi-word signs display a natural colour wave rather than each word changing independently
- Optimised for all devices - Frame throttling and reduced glow layers ensure smooth performance on mobile devices and Safari, without sacrificing visual quality
- White face with coloured glow - The text itself remains crisp white while the surrounding glow cycles through your chosen RGB colours, just like real neon tubing
No action is needed on your end — this effect applies automatically to any customiser that already uses the Flow RGB colour effect.
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Flow RGB animated outline effect
Sign Customiser’s Flow RGB effect has been completely redesigned. Instead of filling the entire shape with animated colours, the effect now animates along the outline of your text and logo designs. This creates a more realistic neon tube simulation and unlocks the ability to use Flow RGB alongside a face colour for the first time.

What’s Changed
- Animated outline effect - The Flow RGB colours now cycle smoothly along the stroke/outline of text and SVG shapes, creating a realistic flowing neon tube appearance
- Works with UV colours - You can now combine Flow RGB with a solid UV colour, where the animated gradient appears as an outline around the filled shape
- AI sign design support - AI sign designs now display the same animated outline effect with thicker, more visible strokes optimised for complex shapes
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UV print on neon signs
Sign Customiser supports UV printing on neon signs, but UV print works differently from tube colours. Tube colours are still a manufacturer-defined LED palette. UV print is the printed face layer.
For AI Sign Designer uploads, Sign Customiser now preserves the original artwork colours on the printed face instead of remapping them to merchant UV swatches. This keeps logos and multi-colour artwork accurate while still matching glow and tube effects to the nearest supported LED tube colour.
That means UV palette colours now have a narrower purpose: they are manual preset swatches for workflows where you intentionally want customers choosing from predefined UV print options. They are no longer the source of truth for AI artwork face colours.
What’s Changed
- Preserved AI artwork colours - AI logo uploads keep their original face colours as printed UV data instead of being snapped to a UV palette
- LED-safe glow matching - Tube and halo colours still match to the nearest supported LED tube colour for accurate illuminated previews
- Hidden UV workflow support - Merchants can keep UV print available as a hidden print capability without exposing manual UV palette choices in the main neon editor
- Manual UV presets still available - UV palette entries remain useful for merchant-managed manual UV print presets and legacy face workflows
- Clearer display values - When preserved artwork colours appear in admin or order data, they are labelled as
Custom UV (#HEX)so they are not confused with palette selections
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AI Sign Designer enhanced logo and image editing capabilities
Sign Customiser’s AI Sign Designer now features powerful image editing capabilities with significant performance improvements and enhanced functionality.
Key Enhancements
Transparency Support Fixed
Critical issues with generating images containing transparency have been resolved. Logos with transparent backgrounds are now handled correctly, maintaining their intended visual appearance across all sign materials including neon and acrylic.
Improved Shape Interpretation for Complex Images
Enhanced shape detection algorithms now provide superior interpretation of busy and complex images. The AI Sign Designer can better distinguish between overlapping elements, handle intricate patterns, and accurately identify shapes in visually dense designs. This improvement ensures that even the most detailed logos and graphics are converted with precision, maintaining the integrity of complex brand elements.