Signs & Wonders

I've been interested in signage since I was a kid. It was probably the road trips. Every summer my very courageous parents would pack our family of four into a Plymouth Horizon and head South to kick around the sticks. In case you've forgotten, a Plymouth Horizon offers less cubic footage than a standard walk-in closet does today. Nor did this vehicle boast air conditioning. Given a choice, it was not the transportation you'd opt for when embarking on a trip South in July.

Somehow, my parents made it seem fun. Lacking GameBoys or built-in DVD players, we were forced --required, by boredom! -- to look at the scenery. As a result, my brain is deeply imprinted with the images we associate with the iconic American Road. It's no trouble, even now, to close my eyes and conjure up a vision of an unbroken countryside that is no longer, of two-lane roads, broken-down barns, cattle and chickens, one-stoplight towns, and 25-cent Coke machines.

The trips usually led us down the blue highways of West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alambama, Mississippi, and Louisiana as we made our way to an eventual Texas destination. In the late '70s, on these back roads, there were still barnside Mail Pouch tobacco ads everywhere. See Rock City - See Seven States was burned into our brains long before we finally made the winding drive up Lookout Mountain to stand gaping out over Lover's Leap. Stuckey's billboards punctuated the scenery with promised oases of cool air, frosty beverages, and cedar knicknacks galore. Cleverly, these signs specified exactly how far away the next store was -- something wonderful for an 8-year-old to obssess over:'Only 17 miles now, Dad! Can we stop? Please? Now only 14 miles away! Are we gonna stop? Now only 9 miles!'

These signs were works of art. Hand-painted, all of them. Not digitally designed. Each was unique, and the colors and letterforms were distinctly different from what you saw in recent advertising art. The arts of lettering and illustration have suffered since color photography became the default ad medium. 'Sign painter' was once a skilled trade; it welcomed itinerant hobos, talented outsiders, and marginal fellows like Woody Guthrie, who could pick up and put down the brush in between stints at other forms of labor -- or after a prolonged bender; no questions asked. Traveling around the country, they carried with them a visual vocabulary of colors, gimmicks, and styles tested and proven to get 'em in the door.

There's a lack of scholarship on American sign painting, which I hope will be rectified as time goes on. In the meantime, it's heartening to see collections like the The American Sign Museum get up and running. By the web site, this looks like one man's labor of love. He's got a formidable collection, including metal, glass, and enameled signs as well as painted; and he's at that turning point where the collection is ready to be shared with the public.

Many museums start at this stage, a vast collection presented as curious miscellany. And many museums never develop beyond that. Still, they carry the legitimacy of the name 'museum,' since there is no organization which regulates the title. But museums shouls always aspire to be more than just interesting collections. They should suggest ways to organize our understanding, provide a solid structure of context and pure information, and provoke us to do more wondering and conjecture of our own. This is their side of the dialogue. Only when a collection such as this captures public attention and funding support , and when those with training in historical understanding become involved in the organization's development, can the Big Ideas get in there and resolve a collection into historical perspective. Looking at signs is a joy, certainly. They're interesting, nostalgic, and beautiful. but then we want to know: Who? Why? How? When? What can we learn from these? What does it mean for me and for the future of business, or advertising, or graphic design, or the availability of itinerant labor for the marginalized? In an age of overwhelming detail, we need to step back and survey from a distance in order to understand what the signs are saying.