The San Francisco Yahoo! Sign Retires

The iconic sign which has become a landmark of San Francisco for over a decade being removed in the next couple weeks is confirmed. This billboard which comes from when websites first began serious advertising, before Facebook or Twitter, will finally have a new image by the start of December.

The sign's design and display was done by the company Blackrocket who faced several challenges with the project. For one, the location of the billboard so it wasn't along the same stretch of highway 101 where the rest of the dot.com advertisement billboards were located. Different designs for the board were tossed around, but the hotel design from art director Aaron Allen ultimately won out. With the design realized, the construction of the board also required careful planning due to the weight of the sign as well as the lighting which would come with it. While the board only was planned to be up for a couple of years, Yahoo! loved it and the board stayed up over five times its original planned time.

That time has finally come to an end however, and there are certainly those who are going to miss it. Steve Stone, the co-creative director, and Robert Boyce, the media director, at Blackrocket during the sign`s creation remember it fondly and are sad to see it go.