The 2017 International Sign Contest

Signs of the Times is proud to announce the winners of our 2017 International Sign Contest. The following twenty-odd pages feature those projects – first, second and third place winners across our 10 categories. These 30 winners, chosen from more than 200 projects entered, represent what our judges felt was the best of sign design and fabrication today.

The contest, which we have sponsored for decades, is intended to promote the excellent work that sign companies around the world are producing, to inspire friendly competition among entrants and new and interesting ideas among readers, and to provide a gallery of the vast range of possibilities for contemporary sign work, both commercial and electric. Descriptions of the first-place projects also offer a bit of insight into the projects’ design, fabrication, equipment and materials details.

Because this was my first contest as coordinator, I turned to the wisdom and experience of three longtime sign industry advocates: Darek Johnson and Wade and Tod Swormstedt. Darek is our editor-at-large, Wade is the executive director of FASI (Foundation for the Advancement of the Sign Industry; Cincinnati) and Tod is the founder of the American Sign Museum (Cincinnati). Theirs was a difficult task as we received many top-shelf entries. I also asked them to nominate one project for “Best of Show,” which Ion Art (Austin, TX) won for their commercial monument sign, Whole Foods/ATX (click here). Special mention goes to Imagination Corp.’s (Chilliwack, BC, Canada) sign system, NEB’s Fun World, as runner up (click here).

I would like to thank very much all of the companies that entered the contest and congratulate those who won. Even though this was the first contest that I coordinated for the magazine, I was happy to be involved in it once again; earlier, I served as the fulltime director of ST Media Group’s book division in years when we published seven hardcover editions (and one PDF edition) of the contest winners in a biannual book, Sign Gallery. As we remember and honor past winners, let’s also celebrate the present. Signs of the Times is happy to present the 2017 International Sign Contest. Enjoy!

Click here to go to the first category, Sign Systems.