Sign Installer Recounts a Living Nightmare, Plus More Reader Comments from October’s Mailbag

On Recent Articles…

• I love the stories about people continuing the old traditional handpainted signs (see ST, August 2022). I follow a handful of these artists on Instagram and am always amazed! — Sean Hughes, Signarama Clinton Township, Clinton Township, MI
• Some of the install articles kind of crack me up. — Kevin Mead, Kolor Werx Creative Services, Portland, OR

Reader Requests

• I would love to see some stories about business growth, how to efficiently make the jump from a small team (2-5 person) to a mid-sized shop (10-15) without face planting in the process. — Clayton Letourneau, Custom Sign Lab, Beamsville, ON, Canada
• I would love to see more articles that pertain to the design of signs. — Michael Johnson, Henry Graphics Inc., Buford, GA
• I’d like to see more articles on the sign industry within the public sector, specifically at universities. How do they compare to private signshops? … Do universities have in-house signshops or do they contract the work? … How [are] universities accommodating the blind or people with low vision and is the need high, low or the same[?] — Grace Francisco, San Diego State University, San Diego

Job Frights

• I find signage scary in general because each item is a “one of a kind” product. Not much repeatability involved. So it always seems like I’m starting from scratch. — Rita Siprak-Weill, Minuteman Press, Annapolis, MD
• I had just taken delivery of an 85-ft. boom lift on a Friday afternoon. This job was to install a large logo about 70 ft. up in the air on a Sunday in downtown Philadelphia. We had arranged for a 150-ft. crane, the lift, street/lane closure permits, a special engineer to site to approve the work, police there to direct traffic, four installers, bus detours, etc.

  Seconds after parking the lift I get a call from the mall rep … He was considering canceling the job because the PM at the company that hired us had told him the wrong time on Sunday for the work. There were crowds of people set to line up for a special event … directly under where we were going to work. After about a million phone calls, I was able to work it out by starting the job two hours earlier on Sunday … We finished with minutes to spare just as people started to arrive. It was a sign installer’s nightmare. — Anonymous Reader (Editor’s note: For more “Scary Stories,” see page 30.)