Sign Industry Veteran Plans Teaching Academy

A GREAT MANY sign and wrap shop owners and managers bemoan the lack of formal training on the part of prospective and new employees. “Where are the schools or programs like those for electricians and other construction trades?” they ask.

Justin Lentz can be counted among the few who want to do something about it. Lentz has dipped in and out of the signage, wayfinding and graphics industry since 2001, he says, starting his career as a production assistant at a small signshop, Rapid Sign Center, in Elkridge, MD. Most recently he wrapped fleets and buses for Advertising Vehicles/Adsposure (Cincinnati), and worked as an assistant installer/production associate/designer across town for Signarama Cincinnati.

Given all the large companies in Cincinnati and the demand for wrap services, Lentz can’t believe there isn’t already an established school or training center for vehicle wrapping in the area. The nearest he knows of are hundreds of miles away in Chicago and Nashville.

Lentz wants to open a school associated with the company he is forming in Cincinnati, to be called Galactus Graphics. “I have worked in many environments where people can train others but don’t want to,” he says, “or it’s kind of like, here is a knife and a squeegee kid. Figure it out.” Lentz envisions a university-type setting where the student can learn all major facets of the business: the design protocols key to the industry, project management, and of course wrapping and other installation methods.

“I was trained to wrap vehicles while working at Advertising Vehicles,” Lentz says. “I started very slowly, just cleaning up for the first month or so, then slowly installing cut vinyl graphics, then moving up to full panels and full vehicle wraps.” He moved to the Adsposure side, wrapping buses for the transit market. “That took me to places like Iowa, Kentucky, Kansas and Missouri. It was really a great [company] and experience,” he says. But of course, as his skills developed on the job, it took considerable time to become fully trained.

Students of Lentz’s program would receive 3M, Avery Dennison or Professional Decal Application Alliance (PDAA) certification in a fraction of the time it took him. He’d also like to emulate the value he received from his own subsequent PDAA training, which he says was to trust himself and be confident in what he was doing because he had done it and was already doing it.

“I was trained/certified by Kenneth Burns of Axis Graphic Installations. He really saw it in me that I had it but I was nervous,” Lentz recalls. “He said, ‘You’ve done this, man. You’ve got it. Just focus on what’s in front of you.’ That really helped me,” he adds. He’d like to imbue this kind of confidence within his students.

His ultimate dream is to offer training in all the major areas of signmaking as well as job placement — though with the market as it is and portends to be, jobs for qualified graduates should be no problem. “I would want to facilitate some training in the beginning, but I would have industry pros come in and teach the aspects I am not strong in,” he says. “As they say, it takes a village.”

Lentz plans to be fully up and running within this coming year. “I’m building relationships and networking. I’m finding support within the industry from former employers, which humbles me and I am trying not to rush things because to this point, everything is moving in the right direction!”

Lentz believes that the sign community can grow by finding different ways to get things accomplished. “To have someone come out of a school well rounded right away would be beneficial to the industry.”