Just A Car Guy: signpainting

Showing posts with label signpainting. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 09, 2026

sign painters van, 1964

https://bl.ag/what-a-ride-the-wonderful-world-of-sign-painter-vehicles/

Tuesday, January 13, 2026

looks like a 2 piece billboard getting painted on the truck, before getting moved to be installed on the roadside, or above a building. Photo taken during 1909 New York automobile carnival parade.

https://forums.aaca.org/topic/341211-period-images-to-relieve-some-of-the-stress/page/262/

Thursday, January 08, 2026

this is all hand painted... I really admire the talent of the artists

https://media.invisioncic.com/r277599/monthly_2021_04/169268533_10159665173142189_5803651422319117667_n.jpg.18f9a8b68528a7a5d65b8510471e8fe4.jpg

Saturday, January 03, 2026

great lettering/sign painting

https://forums.aaca.org/topic/341211-period-images-to-relieve-some-of-the-stress/page/437/

Friday, December 12, 2025

Sign painting, Chicago Style, brief history (I love the signpainters, pinstripers, race car letterers)

These are just notebook covers from a notebook company that makes a variety of covers to appeal to a wider variety of customers

https://fieldnotesbrand.com/products/the-chicago-look

https://www.facebook.com/fieldnotes

The Beverly Sign Co. put Chicago at the center of the mid-century sign-painting map with its “panelized” compositions, novel typographic treatments, and bold colors. This style came to be known as “The Chicago Look.”

Briggs Outdoor Adv. Co. was the company that Jack Briggs began, as a painter in the 1930s and he became the owner of Beverly Sign Co. in 1938 ( see some of their real signs at https://ghostsigns.co.uk/2022/08/chicago-ghost-signs-and-the-beverly-sign-co/ )

Beverly’s artistic significance was underscored by Chicago sign painter Pat Finley: “Beverly garnered national attention for their development of the avant-garde ‘Chicago Look,’ a combination of pastel colors and panelization,” as Finley explains.

‘You take a color-filled geometric shape and insert type into it, and then that breaks down the design into a few different signs, depending on size. That was unheard of before Beverly — those people were pioneers, and with everything they did, the world followed.’ It attracted flocks of aspiring sign artists.”

https://www.beverlyreview.net/news/community_news/article_bdc0b8ea-17ff-11ed-aa68-1784f9d297f5.html

https://sca-roadside.org/lumbering-into-the-past-fantastic-chicago-ghost-signs-uncovered/

https://www.instagram.com/beverlysignsco to see some more of the strike throughs that were in the drawer in the video

Getting to car lettering and cool stuff... check this out, from Kelsey and Andrew McClellan, (Heart & Bone Signs, and Heavy Pages Press)

https://www.facebook.com/heartandbonesigns

https://www.instagram.com/p/DOCBE13AdXo/

this book collects around 140 sketches, design drawings, complete with notes, color specs, and other instructions, from Chicago’s prolific Beverly Sign Co.

Bob Behounek, a sign painter, owns the vast collection of the original design drawings, instructions, and strike throughs

The pictures themselves, dating from 1957 into the 1980s, were preserved by just the kind of fluke that is often required to save things treated in their own time as debris rather than art.

Behounek had received the drawings from a one-time journeyman artist at Beverly, Dan Colyer “When I was working at Beverly, the foreman asked me to clean out the sketches and told me to throw them out. I asked if I could keep them and he said he didn’t care what happened to them as long as I got them out of the shop. So, I kept them.”

https://sca-roadside.org/the-golden-era-of-sign-design-the-rediscovered-sketches-of-beverly-sign-co/

Oh hell, out of my price range, and there are none on Ebay or Amazon so click through to

https://heavypagespress.com/store-2 to order yours

They even do tours of Chicago signs!

for some great sign painting images, see

https://www.instagram.com/p/DOCBE13AdXo/

https://www.instagram.com/heavypagespress/

Saturday, October 18, 2025

I came across a 1909/1915 signpainting book on Ebay, there are a lot of copies for sale for outrageous prices none of us are going to pay, but, this book has really great examples of the ways eyecatching signs were made with flourishes and cool techniques

the cleanest copy is https://www.ebay.com/itm/267308359471

the posting with these nice pages in display is https://www.ebay.com/itm/306551525418

another with other pages displayed is https://www.ebay.com/itm/235961627791

other places to buy are ABEBooks https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=31682787441

there is another version, that no one online is showing the pages of, it's Atkinson Reproduced in Color and is probably far more satisfying to look at
"This book brings Atkinson's 96 sample sign designs to life. Atkinson Reproduced in Color presents all 96 plates, fabricated and painted as Atkinson described."

and this, on Thriftbooks is possibly the same book with a different cover

for only 23 to 35 dollars on Ebay, Etsy, and Thriftbooks

but for 1/8th the price of those books everyone is trying to get 180 dollars for, this one is about 25 on Amazon... but again, no look inside of the pages for a good comparison