Share your signmaking journey

[Dan Sawatzky]

My signmaking journey began (40 years ago) when I was a skinny little kid of 12 or 13 years. I remember sitting on a hot sandy beach as I watched a skilled brush man paint a scripted name (LindyLou) on the side of my uncle's boat. The signman deftly applied the flowing casual script in black and then effortlessly put a dropshade under the lettering with a few easy strokes to match the aqual trim on the boat. I thought it was very cool! I didn't dare talk to the srtist... only watched in awe.

A couple of years later my older brother won a contest, painting a store window which celebrated a local event. He won the $15.00 first prize - BIG money in 1968, especially to a kid who earned his spending money delivering papers and mowing lawns. Minimum wage for those old enough to hold a regular job was $1.00 per hour back then.

A light went on in my head... OPPORTUNITY had knocked and I was listening! I gathered up the old Christmas cards my mom always saved and using them for inspiration as I created a book of designs for Christmas windows I could paint. I knew absolutely nothing about lettering, or paints or brushes but I was confident I could quickly learn. I bought some powder paints and some brushes from a local craft store with the lawn mowing money I had saved. I was ready to do business even though I had never even seen a commercial window splash in my life... I just knew it could be done!

I then hitch hiked into town (about 5 miles distant) and set about selling my window splashes for the upcoming festive season. I had no idea what the windows would be worth... but set a base price of $15.00 - the same amount my brother had won with his contest window. I made cold calls all around the little town. With each success I got braver and more confident and charged more. My designs and their execution became better with practice.

I made $700.00 that first brief season, in only a few weekends, after school and on Saturdays... a vertiable fortune in those days. The next year I more than doubled my earnings and I was only in grade 11... working on my own. I had (and still have) so very much to learn!

It wasn't long before I got the call to do other types of signs. With each opportunity I rose to the challenge, muddling through and learning in the process. I had no formal training, knew no other sign painters. I lived in a smally remote area, with no access to information about the trade. I muddled through, learning as I went. It would be three years before I talked with another sign painter and discovered real signmaking supplies and reference material which helped me learn so much faster.

But I was hooked for life, and I had discovered my life's passion. It was the beginning of a wild adventure of learning and making signs which continues to this day. I was a signman!

Still discovering and learning daily in Yarrow...

-grampa dan

[Raymond Chapman]

I just followed Mike Jackson around and copied him.

[Doug Bernhardt]

Boy this is a tall order. It would require some major typing and I'm rarely able to make this keyboard say what I'm trying to. Look forward to seeing what others post though. Maybe I'll screw up the courage but this past week or two has been difficult to find time for anything. Am into another monster carved job right now and tomorrow is the last day of the real dusty/heavy work part. Looking forward to the fun.

[Mike Jackson]

Dan,
When I was still in high school, I saw a guy hand lettering a sign just down the street from my home. I watched him paint the whole sign and asked lots of questions. He gave me an old brush and a bit of his lettering enamel. I practiced quite a bit with them until I ran out of paint. I don't recall his name. A while later, I saw another sign painter named Glen Newcomer lettering aluminum paint on a donut shop window. I talked to him quite a while, too. He invited me to drop by his shop in downtown Oklahoma City. I did that off and on through the first year or two of college, then tried to get a job at one of the mini-outdoor shops in the north part of OKC. They either weren't hiring or weren't offering enough money, so I more or less started my little shop about then and there. Glen helped a lot during that time. I tried working for a company that did point of purchase screen printed advertising, but I didn't like the union set up. I got the job as a result of a lead from a professor, but actually it was really just a packaging job and nothing to do with the design part. After a few weeks of sweating in that hot plant, I really dug in and started making signs to help pay my way through college. The rest is more or less history.

It is always interesting to think back and wonder what would have happened if the mini-outdoor plant would have hired me. Realistically, I'd probably have worked there long enough to get some knowledge and then split off to start my own shop. You never know.

Mike Jackson

[Raymond Chapman]

Well, actually....following Jackson around was only part of it.

While I was in elementary school in the early 50's (that 1950's not 1850) we lived next to an ice plant that my father managed. The local sign painter would come out to do signs on the building and letter the vehicles. Being in a very small town meant that there was only one guy that did signs and he fit the mold of those early signmen...he was the town drunk. (he also was the inspiration of the fictional character that I use in my articles - Joe Wino).

Since we lived on the same property as the ice plant, I would always watch him while he did the lettering...and also bug him with dozens of questions. At that time sign folks were closed mouth and didn't share anything. He would just tell me to get lost.

At the same time my older brother Wayland was interested in art and like to draw and paint and so we began this quest to find brushes, paints, etc.

My first paying sign job was done for the owner of the ice plant and was a show card that said "Air Conditioned Inside", complete with the snow on the top of the letters, just like in the Speedball book. I received 50 cents and thought this might be a good way to earn some spending money. I was 10. Now, 53 years later I still think it's a pretty good way to earn some spending money.

While in elementary school it was easy to get out of a lot of work by doing posters and such for the teachers. The extra attention it brought was also nice. Since it was a small school I became known as the school artist, although there were a lot of kids that had more talent. My passion was lettering and not the usualy stuff that kids drew.

Looking back now the work was very crude and accomplished with small cans of hardware store enamel and "artist" brushes that sold for a dime a dozen. I drew off the letters and then just dobbed in the paint.

Through junior high and high school I worked doing signs for school events and also local businesses. Somewhere along the line my brother discovered lettering quills and I met a gentleman that was willing to share his skills with me. He was Jimmy Coppin and attended our church. He told me about One Shot Lettering Enamel and how to pallet a brush and a lot of "secrets" that set me on the path of my life's work.

When I set off to college as a newlywed (Jeanne and I were 18), I wasn't sure that sign painting was to be my life's profession. With the exception of Jimmy Coppin, most of the sign painters that I saw were drunks and worked out of the back of their car. While in high school one that was probably the best around, died and the town's businessmen took up a collection to bury him.

In the town where I now have my studio (Temple) there was a sign painter that did excellent work and whenever I was there I would drive around and admire his designs. He did a lot of work for the local theaters. His name was Raymond Lee and I later bought a box full of gold leaf and other things from his widow after he died. I still have them.

Fortunately, while in college I met the man that would influence me more than any other, with the exception of my father and brother. Ellison Edwards was a Christian man that was an exeptional painter, but also had a head for business and was one of the most caring people that I had ever met. He took me under his wing and taught me how to weild a brush. Even though I only worked for him for about 18 months, he influenced me to always do my best. Even after graduating and moving away Jeanne and I would travel back to Abilene each summer and I would work in Ellison's shop for two weeks while he went on vacation. He even let us live in his house.

Ellsison was also responsible for getting me a job at the local TV station doing art cards. Before computers all the graphics were done on small show cards and then photographed to make 35mm slides to use for local commercials, news events, etc. I had a key to the station and would pick up work orders on my way home from my sign shop job, do the show cards at night, and then deliver them back to the station on my way to college classes. It's a wonder that I ever graduated because I rarely did any studying.

Upon graduation I began teaching school but worked weekends, summers, and holidays in my brothers sign shop (Belco Signs) which he had begun in 1962. After three years of teaching junior high I "retired" and began working with Wayland full time. That was to last about 22 years until I left and opened my own business.

While at Belco, I did designs for electrical signs and headed up the commercial department. At one time there were 23 employees, five of which were full time sign painters. During that time the Letterheads came upon the scene and I hosted the first Letterhead gathering in Texas in November, 1983.

Even after all these years I still get up every morning eager to get to the studio. Fortunately, I've never had to work a day in my life because I love what I do....and it's not work.

Sorry for the length....I get carried away.

[Kent Smith]

Interesting how there are some parrallels in the stories.

I was born into the business, Dad's shop was just through the kitchen door. My great-great grandfather was a wheel wright and did striping and lettering, taught the trade to his son who also taught two of his sons. One took over the wagon and carriage making while one became a full time signpainter in central Illinois. My grandfather was the 9th child, only survivor of the third wife and was taught some of the trade by his half-brother signpainter. In addition to painting signs, grandad operated a monument business and later moved to Colorado where he was a signpainter for the Rio Grande Railroad. Dad was the right age to tag along on many sign projects and gained an iterest in graphics, pictorials and lettering in the process. Grandad was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1919 so Dad never actually worked the trade with him but kept the interest and apprenticed with McBirney signs in downtown Denver beginning in 1924 and started out business in 1928.

I was doing shocards for Daniels and Fisher department stores and a few others when my friends were busting their tails delivering newspapers. Dad felt that since he was not actually able to learn the trade from his Dad, he would not make the same mistake with me. I began learning lettering as soon as I could hold a pencil. My kindergarten teacher was surprised when she asked us to draw an "A" in our Big Chief tablet when I did so, complete with outline and shade. Not what she had in mind and still the talk of the class reunions.

By the time I was in high school, I felt I had enough of the trade so my college track was to teaching. Oddly, I kept the business going after Dad died my senior year and continued through college and teaching years. When I was teaching history at the University, I decided to return to the trade full time for a year or so to get a little money ahead...and still trying to do that.

We have had a good life in the trade and still enjoy going in every morning to spend the day creating which as Ray says, is not like working at all.

[Doug Bernhardt]

Well lets give this a try. I think I always had an interest in this side of the "arts" if that can be said, and one day after school, while taking a short cut, I saw 2 gentlemen loading a sign onto the top of their van, so I lent a hand. This was in Peterborough Ontario where I grew up. Like many, it just never occured to me that signs had to be "built/made" and there was always a fascination for me when walking under that sign which hung over one of the main streets in town. A part time job a number of years later took me to a furniture store where they had a signwriter on staff. I suppose that sealed my fate although at the time I was still busy trying to be a "Rock-star". Around 1972 I moved to Ottawa where there were opportunities to work in a shop and started pushing a broom and coating boards at Harvey Signs. All the while I had a little sign table in my apartment livingroom, no time or space for a TV, but lots for practice and as my first summer in Ottawa approached I started to visit other shops in town. It was during that time I first stumbled across Harry Koffman's shop one Saturday and started helping out there occasionaly. He had the best guys under his roof and a look at any of the best work on the main streets, always came from his shop. I wound up spending another 12 or so years in his place before striking out on my own in about 1985 or 6. In fact as I write this note, the shop I spent many long days and nights in, has been sold (after his death) and will be demolished before the snow melts this spring. The first number of years on my own were spent much as the previous, doing sho-cards and banners...all the typical things still done everywhere, and it was then that the first computers began reaching into the market. It was nothing that I was, or in fact am interested in doing, so other interests started to develop. I share in Raymond's thought as it would be easy to get carried away here. So many little, and not so little things come to mind while my 2 fingers try to keep up with me!

[William Holohan]

This may get a little long. I only know how to tell long stories. My late Dad used to tell me that "If I ran at the bottom like a ran top, I wouldn't live a week."
My journey is a mite different and much shorter. I'm 68 and until I was 60 Ididn't know squat about the sign business/profession. Fell into it by accident. After a forced retirement for health reasons, I started a small fire evacuation sign business focused on large multi family rental properties. (After 30+ years in property management directing and running rehabs of multi family properties I could walk the walk and talk the talk to property management companies.
No brushes, paint, pallets, or anything else that a real sigman/woman would recognise did I use in my work... All layed out on the computer, brought to a specialty printer and run. Then framed in whatever style the client wanted.
The printer eventually told me that it was too much work for too little profit on his part. Suggested that I go to a local sign company that had a Gerber Edge and would be able to take care of my needs. I drove my skinny butt (at the time) over to this sign shop. Showed them what I needed and got a little shock. Told me that their software wouldn't handle Adobe Pagemaker files. They needed them in either Adobe Illustrator of as Photoshop tiffs. No problem say's I, I have Photoshop on both my puters. "You do?" asks one of the partners. "We have it but cant get it to install." "You install it for us and we'll do your first job for half price."
From that day on, my life has never been the same. I ended up installing the software. Then "Could you show us how to use it?" As you all know, Photoshop has a very intense learning curve. The "Half Price" trade off lasted for three years. They never did learn the program. "that's too much work." For the sake of my sanity I had to leave that job.
To make a long story just a wee bit shorter, I totally fell in love with the sign business. I read every old and new Sign Builder Illustrator, Signs of the Times, Signcraft magazine that they had to tune my brain to what the industry/profession was all about. Read Mastering Layout till my eyes rested on my cheek bones.
I eventually found the more popular web sites shortly before Rick Glawson passed. Reading all the postings and reminiscence's let me know that these/you were the kind of people I wanted to meet. So different from the owners of the shop that I spent three years working with. Moderately talented vinyl jockies. $30,000 router that they haven't trained to kern properly after 5 years.
Ya wanna make poor kerning shout at ya. Gild it!
I try to make every meet that I can afford to go to. The real signmen/women at these meets accept me into their midst like an old friend. Each and every meet that I have been to has been a totally joyful experience for me.
I will never be an accomplished sign maker. Way too late for me. I try it all at home just to see if I can do it.
My quest now is to collect as many of the old signmaking books as my budget will allow. There is so much truly interesting history of this under appreciated profession.
I have had a full and happy life for the most part. There has been very little real sadness in it. The only real sadness that is in it now is having learned that I'm a "coulda been" signman. Had I somehow fallen into this profession in my younger days how much more satisfying a profession it would have been for me.
Told ya I was a little "windy."