2008 International Sign Contest

The 2008 edition of the International Sign Contest – the 31st year of ST-sponsored competitions, and the sixth in which we’ve published a single competition that highlights commercial and electric signage in a single gallery – presents a significant retooling from prior editions. Because vehicle graphics had been one of the strongest categories in the Sign Contest, we gave it its own spotlight with a separate competition (see ST, December 2007, page 90). However, the remaining 12 categories’ quality made the competition as fiercely contested as ever.

The 295 qualified entries (we received approximately 40 more submissions that were either repeats of entries from prior years or not competition-worthy) represented a diverse assemblage of the colorful, ostentatious programs and understated, minimalist environmental graphics. The far-reaching breadth of approaches to design, material and situational considerations never ceases to amaze me. This diversity of solutions affirms the bountiful creative and fabrication talent in our industry, as well as the ability to understand client needs.

The first-place winners span the gamut from Dan Sawatzky’s whimsical sign system for a miniature golf course at Minnesota’s gargantuan Mall of America to Danthonia Designs’ towering bookstore façade; and the ultra-vivid, LEDdisplay spectacular that YESCO’s Las Vegas branch fabricated for that city’s Miracle Mile shopping center. However, simple graphics and iconography propelled Sign Depot’s (Kitchener, ON, Canada) electric-monument sign for an Ontario steakhouse to Best of Show accolades.

“Its use of color, type and the flame element made me hungry,” one of the judges quipped.

Commercial Pole/Pylon Signs represented the largest individual category – 48 programs vied for supremacy. And, as usual, the building-sign categories attracted the lion’s share of entries – Commercial drew 41 entries, and Electric generated 40 submissions. Unique signs (an eclectic repository for signage that doesn’t fit a mold) generated 35 entries, and Commercial Sign Systems received 27 competitors.

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Rounding out the field, Commercial Monument and Electric Monument Signs each drew 21 submissions; Electric Pole/Pylon Signs (19); Electric Sign Systems and Electronic Message Centers (16 apiece); Murals (seven); and Banners (four – yes, four).

I’ve always found it ironic that one of the sign industry’s bread-and-butter products solicits such paltry representation in our contest. So, please consider this an open and shameless plea for signshops and digital-service providers everywhere to inundate us with banner entries for the 2009 competition).

Tangents aside, enjoy the gallery. And, exciting changes may arrive later this year that facilitate entering the contest, as well as possible category additions that would allow more opportunities to showcase a broader array of environmental graphics. Stay tuned.

The Winners:
Banners/Soft Signs
Commercial Sign Systems
Electric Sign SystemsCommercial Monument SignsElectric Monument SignsMurals/SupergraphicsCommercial Pole/PylonCommerical Building SignsElectric Building SignsElectronic Message CentersUnique Signs Electric Pole/Pylon Signs

The Judges:
This quartet of Cincinnati-based graphics professionals – an electric-sign company VP, a vinyl-shop proprietor, a dimensional-sign fabricator and a graphic designer – distilled the highly competitive contest field into the winners that follow.

After having spent his school-age years pushing a broom and emptying trash, Kerry joined the family business full-time in 1979. The fourth generation to work there, he began his career hand-lettering vehicles and billboards, as well as fabricating small commercial signs. Through the years, Kerry, along with his brothers, Kevin and Scott, have grown the business into a full-service manufacturing and installation entity. He said: “Throughout those exciting years, I’ve enjoyed the challenges of growth and the industry’s rapidly changing technology. Our industry’s future is uncertain, but we’ll undoubtedly continue to be challenged by new opportunities and possibilities.”

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Bob McElroy has owned his shop in downtown Cincinnati for 10 years with his wife, Joyce. The company takes on “any kind of work it can handle,” he said. Media Sign’s portfolio includes banners as large as 45 x 90 ft.; 5,000 bumper stickers for Cincinnati’s Police Dept.; digital graphics for Newport on the Levee, a popular Cincinnati-area destination; and more than 600 wayfinding and ID signs for Cincinnati’s St. Xavier High School, which fielded the U.S.’s top-ranked football team according to some national publications. McElroy appreciates the fruits of entrepreneurial work: “I enjoy the variety of new daily challenges and making decisions that deliver immediate impact, in contrast to 24 years in the corporate world, where I had to wait too often to see results.”

Frank Riordan, senior designer and product manager for Swath Design, has 13 years of environmental-graphic design (EGD) and project-management experience. His portfolio includes Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art and Museum of Science and Industry, as well as Cincinnati’s Procter & Gamble world headquarters and Edgewood, KY’s St. Elizabeth Hospice Center. Riordan is the chairman of the Society for Environmental Graphic Design’s Cincinnati chapter, served as a guest instructor for at Kent State Univ. and facilitated several EGD workshops. He holds a bachelor’s degree in graphic design from the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning.

In 1990, Shoemaker left an engineering job to join an artistically inclined friend to found the Creative Blast Co. One year later, he took on the shop as a sole proprietorship, and, today, he operates a 10,000-sq.-ft. facility that employs five full-time and two part-time employees. Shoemaker still handles all sales and designs himself, because he believes it helps him maintain a strong handle on his shop’s workflow. Now, Creative Blast fabricates wholesale signs for approximately 20 other signshops, as well as real-estate developers and property-management companies. He said, “It’s been a pleasure manufacturing quality sandblasted signs and seeing them scattered throughout the city as I drive around town.”