From Southern California to Oregon and back again!

Over 40 years ago a young boy began to work for his dad in a small sign shop in Costa Mesa, California; sweeping floors, learning hand lettering on paper banners, handling a quill, setting up and helping his dad paint wall signs on scaffolds. Dad would paint the outlines and his son would fill in the center of the letters.

I used to crawl around on scaffolds 20 feet in the air and Dad would say things like “if you are going to work on a plank with another person you are going to have to learn how to keep from rocking the boat.” When I dropped a finch into the water (only once) at Newport Harbor while helping on a wall sign at low tide, also on a shop built scaffold, He said: “That was my best finch!”-as I watched it twirl to the bottom.  He gave me another brush he said: “just don’t let it happen again”. 

AAA Truck Lettering was my Dad’s sign shop in the 60s. In Costa Mesa, California he was an accomplished show card writer and “held the brush slightly different” he said, than a typical sign painter.  I began working at his shop in grade school. He quickly put me to work learning letter strokes. I spent hours learning how to hold a “quill” between my index finger and thumb, how to twirl the brush for proper letter formation etc. I did paper banners for my school and small signs at work to keep in practice in the 70s.

In the 80’s sign companies in Orange County, ca hired me to do hand lettering, wood signs, paint and design. I was introduced to a Gerber 4b and from then on i saw the advantage of the new sign technology. A sign shop in southern California put half dozen sign painters out of work when they went to the computer cut lettering. I also did signs with large heat transfer graphics for flex faces, awnings, sandblasted signs, and more design work for electrical sign companies as well.

In the 90s When I moved to Oregon in the 90’s I started my own little sign shop in a 12x12 shack next to a rented mobile home in Bandon, OR. I once had to project a puffin image and large ribbon shape though the window from my kitchen to the living room to make a pattern for the Bandon Centennial Sign on highway 101.

While still in Oregon, I extended my experience to the Gerber saber router and Auto-Cad R-14 at a Wilsonville company. I worked for two interior decor and signage companies for grocery chain stores. In Eugene I was part of an international company to start a new cnc and output department. I used three software programs to dxf-tranfer into expensive cnc programming software; we converted files from the design department to the cnc department for cut out décor, letters and sign shapes. Back in Coos Bay, OR- I continued perfecting my experience of vinyl applications on plastic, pvc, vinyl banners, vehicles, boats, plywood, and aluminum signs etc.

Koinonia Design Lettering I started my current sign shop in California in 2005 when I finished a boat name here. The “Koinonia” was the name and became my new home as I married my lovely wife Gail, a “bean counter” in Ventura. I decided to make it the name of my business as well as our boat. “Koinonia” means fellowship in New Testament Greek.  I like to “design” and the word “letting” is left over from my Dad’s shop. I obtained a non-electrical installation state license# 898631 in 2007. We can do any kind of signs from design and permits to production and installation (electrical is subcontracted).