Greetings! My name is Mike and I joined Signs 101 because I’m looking to expand my knowledge (which is almost non-existent) of signage. I’m primarily a commercial artist and have been doing mostly humorous style illustration for books and magazines, caricatures, t-shirt designs and character design for the last two decades but a year ago I started working part time at a Trader Joe’s as the in-store Sign Artist to qualify for health insurance because as a freelance artist, that’s the most expensive part of my overhead and it helps pick up the slack when things get slow.
We do everything from 3 ft by 5 ft chalkboards to smaller signs on foamboard and laminated paper signs. Over the last year I’ve been doing a lot of signs out of cut foamboard and a few signs have been made using a jigsaw and masonite and those types of projects have really gotten me interested in handmade sign art (including the art of hand lettering and want to start learning how to do it for real with quills and enamels etc.) We primarily use paint markers to do most of the work as it usually has to be done really quickly (they typically only take about two hours to do) and it doesn’t stay up all that long before it’s painted over so there’s no reason to spend much time on them.
I’ve gotten a few issues of Sign Craft, a few books on brush and sign lettering and I’m learning about 1-Shot, sign-foam, brushes and everything else from reading through the archives and searching YouTube for tutorials. I’m beginning to think I’ve missed my calling because I have in insatiable appetite for sign art these days. Looking through those issues of Sign Craft and reading this forum is inspiring.
I couldn’t think of a cool “sign” related name when I registered so I chose an old Don Martin sound effect from MAD magazine as my screen name. I have a few small fun personal projects in mind that I’d like to do in the next couple of months once (one of which is doing something cut out of plywood and painted for my new baby nephew’s room so I’m sure I’ll have a bunch of questions once I get around to starting the project. Right now it’s just a bit of a hobby as I have a lot of other things going on but maybe one day I can make a few dollars doing some sign work
I’m not sure how active I can be on the forum as I registered many months ago and am just getting around to my first post now. Either way, Here are a few examples of my character design/logo work as well as some of the signs from Trader Joe’s.
We do everything from 3 ft by 5 ft chalkboards to smaller signs on foamboard and laminated paper signs. Over the last year I’ve been doing a lot of signs out of cut foamboard and a few signs have been made using a jigsaw and masonite and those types of projects have really gotten me interested in handmade sign art (including the art of hand lettering and want to start learning how to do it for real with quills and enamels etc.) We primarily use paint markers to do most of the work as it usually has to be done really quickly (they typically only take about two hours to do) and it doesn’t stay up all that long before it’s painted over so there’s no reason to spend much time on them.
I’ve gotten a few issues of Sign Craft, a few books on brush and sign lettering and I’m learning about 1-Shot, sign-foam, brushes and everything else from reading through the archives and searching YouTube for tutorials. I’m beginning to think I’ve missed my calling because I have in insatiable appetite for sign art these days. Looking through those issues of Sign Craft and reading this forum is inspiring.
I couldn’t think of a cool “sign” related name when I registered so I chose an old Don Martin sound effect from MAD magazine as my screen name. I have a few small fun personal projects in mind that I’d like to do in the next couple of months once (one of which is doing something cut out of plywood and painted for my new baby nephew’s room so I’m sure I’ll have a bunch of questions once I get around to starting the project. Right now it’s just a bit of a hobby as I have a lot of other things going on but maybe one day I can make a few dollars doing some sign work
I’m not sure how active I can be on the forum as I registered many months ago and am just getting around to my first post now. Either way, Here are a few examples of my character design/logo work as well as some of the signs from Trader Joe’s.
