Blog
October 11, 2026
A Sky Sign at the Top of a Tower: 3 mm Aluminium Letters for AMJ Land’s Green’s, Pune
Letters you can read from half a kilometre away, at the top of a tower with no way up. Here’s how we built them in 3 mm aluminium, hung a gondola off the terrace, and made sure they never come down.
Case study · AMJ Land, Green’s
Half a kilometre away, and you can still read it
Most of our signs live at eye level: a shop front, a reception wall, a clinic door. You can walk up and touch them.
This one sits at the top of a residential tower in Thergaon, Chinchwad, and you can read it from almost half a kilometre away. Nobody walks up to touch it. That changes everything about how it's made.
The client
AMJ Land, Pune developer
The logo
About 1.5 storeys tall
Readable from
Almost half a kilometre
Two years on
Still glowing, no LED failures
How it reached us
Found online, decided in our studio
AMJ Land had just finished a new tower for its project, Green’s, and wanted the project name and the AMJ Land logo up top, lit at night.
They found us online. Then their purchase manager, Mr Godbole, came over to see us. He walked through our studio, saw the sky sign letters we keep on display, and made up his mind on the spot.
Not just a big shop board
Why a sky sign is a different animal
We can make a sign of almost any size in our workshop. Size was never the problem here. A sky sign has four enemies a shop board never meets:
Wind
At the top of a tower it never stops pushing, and it gusts hard in the monsoon.
Rain and sun
Years of rain and summer sun, with no shade and no shelter.
Size
The AMJ Land logo alone is about one and a half storeys tall.
No way up
Once it’s up, nobody can pop up with a ladder for a quick fix.
So everything about it, from the metal to the fixings, is built for decades, not years.
Before we cut a single letter
A week of sample letters
AMJ Land is very particular about its brand colours: a deep blue for the logo and a fresh green for Green’s. Getting acrylic colour right by day is one thing. Getting it right at night, with light shining through it, is another.
So before making the real thing, we made a few sample letters and lit them two ways for Mr Godbole to compare:
1
Cut samples
A few letters in the brand’s blue and green acrylic.
2
Option 1: coloured light
Blue LEDs behind the blue acrylic, green LEDs behind the green.
3
Option 2: natural white light
Regular natural white LEDs behind both colours.
4
His pick
The coloured acrylic with natural white LEDs.
The sampling took a week. Only then did we get the go-ahead for the full job.
The result
Blue and green, after dark
Here's what that choice looks like from the ground.
The logo
The AMJ Land logo: blue acrylic, natural white LEDs.
Both signs
The logo on one face, Green’s on the other, against the night sky.
Real photos, taken from the ground at night.
The letters
3 mm aluminium sheet. Welded.
Here's the part we're proudest of. The letters on a regular shop board have aluminium sides of about 0.85 mm. That's plenty at eye level.
For this tower, every letter is built from 3 mm aluminium sheet, about three and a half times thicker, cut, bent and welded into a hollow box. Aluminium doesn't rust, so it can take the rain and the sun at that height for years, even decades. The faces are blue and green acrylic in the brand colours.
Illustration: a regular shop-board letter next to a sky sign letter. Not to scale.
The light
Osram inside, about 500 of them
For most of our boards we use good industrial LED modules from UNI, Rishang or Ares. For a sign this high, the client went premium: Osram modules, a premium brand, and priced to match.
Each module carries four LEDs and draws 1.8 W. There are about 500 modules across the letters, about 2,000 LEDs in all, so the whole sign runs on under a kilowatt. Bright enough to read from half a kilometre away.
Watch
How we build sky signs
A one-minute look at how our sky signs come together: aluminium bodies bent on our machine, laser-cut acrylic faces, LED modules inside, and the climb to the top.
The wall
Why we didn’t screw the letters to the wall
The tower's walls are hollow concrete blocks. A screw or nail in a hollow block can work loose over the years, and at that height, with that much wind, loose is not an option.
What holds a building up is its skeleton: the RCC beams and slabs. You can't see them, they're painted over like the rest of the wall, but they run across it about a metre apart. So that's where we fixed.
The frame for the AMJ Land logo, bolted to the wall during installation, before the letters went on.
1
Find the beams
Mark where the RCC beams run under the paint.
2
Frame first
Bolt a painted MS (mild steel) frame into the beams with anchor bolts.
3
Letters next
Fix the letters onto the frame, not onto the wall.
The wind pushes on the letters, the letters hold on to the frame, and the frame holds on to the building's skeleton. That's how a sign stays put on the side of a tall building, whatever the weather.
Before
A blank wall, high up
This is what we started with: plain painted wall at the top of the tower, and a long way down.
Before
The top of the wall where the logo would go.
Before
The same blank wall, seen from the ground.
Taken by our team before installation.
Getting up there
A gondola, a harness and a painful bill
There's no scaffolding that reaches the top of a tower like this, so we used a gondola: a platform hung from arms on the terrace and lowered down the wall on steel ropes. Our team worked from it, harnessed in, with a safety line, and the builder gave us permission to set it up.
We don't own a gondola, so we hired one. ₹30,000 for 15 days. That's more than the price of many of the shop boards we make. Paying it felt like having a tooth pulled. But AMJ trusted us with everything, and without it there was no installation.
If you're planning a sign on the side of a tall building, budget for this too: the gondola (or whatever gets the team up there) is an extra cost on top of the sign itself.
Illustration: the gondola, the frame bolted into the RCC beams, and the letters on the frame. Not to scale.
The part nobody photographs
One letter at a time, up the stairs
Making the letters in our workshop was the easy part. Getting them to the top was not.
We hired a truck to bring them to the site. Then hamals (porters) loaded them into the building's service lift. The lift went to the top floor, but not to the terrace, so from there the hamals carried every letter up the stairs, one at a time.
Keeping a crew of hamals moving giant letters through a lift and up a staircase is a job of its own, and here I have to give credit where it's due. My part was talking to the client and winning the job. The fabrication, the truck, the hamals, the lift, the stairs and the installation: that was all Sachin. He did the heavy lifting everywhere; I mostly pulled my hair out on the phone.
Day and night
Readable by day, glowing by night
The coloured acrylic does the work in daylight; the LEDs take over after sunset.
By day
Green’s in green acrylic near the top of the tower.
By night
Both signs lit, seen from the foot of the tower.
Real photos of the finished sign.
Two years later
Still glowing. Nothing has gone wrong.
We put this sign up in 2024. It has glowed strongly every night since, through every monsoon, without a single LED failure.
On the first night it lit up, the client picked up the phone just to tell us how happy he was. There's no Google review to show for it, but that call was worth a lot to us.
Turnkey, start to finish: the proposal, the samples, the fabrication, the frame, the wiring, the gondola and the installation were all ours. The sky-sign licence was the one thing on the client's side.
The specs
What went up
Client
AMJ Land, for its residential project Green’s, Thergaon, Chinchwad (Pune)
When
2024
Size
Logo about one and a half storeys tall, plus the Green’s letters
Letters
Hollow, 3 mm aluminium sheet, welded; rust-proof
Faces
Blue and green acrylic in the brand colours
LEDs
About 500 Osram modules, 4 LEDs each, 1.8 W per module, natural white
Fixing
Painted MS frame, anchor-bolted into the RCC beams; letters fixed on the frame
Installation
From a hired gondola, with harnesses and a safety line
Scope
Turnkey: proposal, samples, fabrication, transport, frame, wiring, installation (licence by the client)
Planning a sky sign?
What a sky sign costs
As a planning guide, our lit sign boards page gives about ₹2,000 per sq ft + GST for all ten kinds of lit sign, sky signs included. It's indicative: the height, how we reach the wall, the size of the letters, the LEDs and how the building is built all change the price. So we look at the building, make a free proposal, and the final price comes with it.
Lit 3D signs, sky signs included
about ₹2,000 per sq ft + GST (indicative)
Frame, gondola and installation at height
quoted for your building
Good to know
What to send us
A photo of the building, its height, the wall you have in mind, and your logo.
The licence
A sky sign needs the municipal corporation’s licence. On this job, the client took care of it.
Lead time
Fabricated signs typically take 1-15 days after you approve the proposal; colour samples, if you want them, add about a week.
Warranty
Six months from installation, as on all our fabricated signs; after that, repairs are chargeable.
Putting your name on a building? Send us a photo and we'll make a free proposal, with the layout drawn on your own building.
Read more
Start here
Lit signs
Sky signs and 3D LED sign boards
All ten kinds of lit sign we make, from shop boards to letters for the top of a tower.
See sky signs →Our workshop
Where the letters are made
Laser cutters, bending machines and the floor where every sign is built and tested before it leaves.
See our infrastructure →Not sure what kind of sign your building needs? Try the board finder in our sign board guide.
The view from the top
Half a kilometre off, and still glowing
Next time you see blue and green glowing at the top of a tower in Thergaon, you'll know what's holding it up.
See every photo on the Green’s sky sign job page, or watch us build a 100 ft sky sign on another Pune tower.
More signs, high up
Case study
Letters hung from a ceiling, in five days
A ceiling-suspended LED letter sign for Yashogandharva, Shaniwar Peth.
Read the story →Our work
A clinic sign tilted towards the road
Backlit boards high on a building, with the face angled down to the street.
See the job →Your turn
Want your name on the skyline?
Send us a photo of your building on WhatsApp. We'll plan the letters, the frame and the way up.
Looking for any specific product?
Drop us a line. Send us your query. And we’ll get back to you with solutions and answers.
Mitesh Sanghani
Mitesh lives, mostly for Saturdays.
But when forced to work, you’ll find him heading Orchid Digitals – a printing press in Pune.
If it’s an emergency, try looking for him in the hills behind his house. You’ll almost certainly find him… lazing under a tree, with a book in hand.
