While our official website at www.finestkindsigns is all about contact info and the photos of work we've done, it is by design somewhat static - semi-permanent photos and text. The blog is much more personal, immediate and behind-the scenes. In it I talk about signs and design, but you're also likely to get my opinions on the local zoning board, the Red Sox, and motorcycles, among other things. You'll see pictures of signs in the works, the shop, Augie the Doggie, and whatever else I feel like posting. I have a lot of interests aside from signs, and I get a kick out of being able to share them here.

About the whole hand lettering thing.
Here's a sign related subject I get passionate about, so this is a perfect "first post" for the blog. I'm a practitioner of a dying trade, that of the traditional sign painter. Technology, in the form of computer-driven vinyl cutters, routers and large format inkjet printers, have made my brushes, paints, and mahlstick virtually obsolete - yet though I have and use technology, I have made a conscious decision to produce the majority of my work by hand, using traditional materials. Why? Well, the best way to explain it is that having learned this elemental part of the trade back in the 80s, I have a deep appreciation for what's involved. Learning to letter with a brush is probably one of the most difficult activities a person can attempt, requiring the development of fine motor skills, an eye for detail, and a sense of rythm and proportion. The letterer has to be able to feel the viscousity of the paint in the brush, the response of the brush to the painting surface, the flow of the paint from the brush, how that flow is altered and controlled by the presure and movement of the fingers.
That's the technical side of it, but the real reason I keep doing it is all in my head. Everything else in this trade has been made faster easier - with plotters, printers, CNC routers, etc. - but not brush lettering. As I said, learning to letter is extremely difficult. It requires long hours of practice - an oldtime signman once estimated that to competently paint a letter "O" under two inches high required approximately two thousand hours of practice. There are no shortcuts, no special tricks, just diligence and patience. Brush lettering can't be learned in a weekend, or from a seminar, and in a very real sense it cannot even be taught. The only thing that can be taught is how to practice; the would-be letterer has to find the time, and develop the patience and discipline to practice...and practice...and practice.
Sounds pretty horrible, doesn't it? In my case, practice was all after hours at the shop where I worked in Phoenix, Arizona from 1985 to 1988. My boss and mentor, Brad Lindsey, often worked late, and I would frequently stay into the evening, practicing at the bench on old newspapers. Those evenings - talking to Brad, listening to his stories of childhood in South Carolina, the smell of paint and the background of country music on the radio - will always be some of my best memories. But the best part of all that practice is the magical moment when it starts to work - when after hundreds of smeared and crooked brushstrokes, suddenly the paint and the brush and your fingers start to cooperate, and the strokes flow from the brush exactly as you imagined. It's not that you suddenly are a competent letterer, but the light appears at the end of the tunnel, and from this point the practice becomes easier, and as it becomes easier, it also becomes more compelling.
As hand lettering becomes rare, it also becomes more valuable - but in the end the reason I do it is because I like it. As any good brush letterer can tell you, lettering is its own reward. It's a relaxing, unhurried, focused activity with it's own rythm, timing, and some say, swing, that defies explanation. I personally love lettering on a warm summer evening at the shop, when the phone doesn't ring, the Red Sox are on the radio and the peepers out in the marsh are all singing for love. Betcha there's not too many jobs you can say that about.

For a person starting out in the sign trade today, there's no real incentive to learn lettering by hand. The machines can do it all - but in doing so, they seperate the humanity and skill and pride from the end result, and turn the sign into a commodity. A hand lettered sign, on the other hand, is a connection to the letterer; to his skills, those long hours of practice, and ultimately to the satisfaction and joy taken from the work itself. There's a word for all that, a very overused word that is applied to many things, but is really all about one basic human need. That word is Art.