Never mind the bold designs, his use of timeless colors, and the effortless grace with which he turns a blank space into something beautiful. Jon Lloyd doesn’t see his work as art. And he certainly doesn’t see himself as an artist.
“I’ve always considered myself blue-collar,” Lloyd says. “Painting signs is a blue-collar trade.”
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Yet for the many businesses across St. Louis whose storefronts he has transformed, Lloyd’s work tells a different story. Lloyd runs an eponymous vintage sign-painting operation that has become a go-to for small business owners eager to give their storefronts some handcrafted charm. Even if you don’t know his name, you likely know his work. Lloyd has designed and hand-painted the signs for businesses such as Sugarwitch, an ice cream sandwich shop in Carondelet; Series Six, the locally focused apparel shop in Lindenwood Park; and scores of others across St. Louis. For a city blessed with well-preserved classic architecture, Lloyd’s signs feel like they belong where he creates them.
“You look at old pictures of the streets in St. Louis, they look terrific,” Lloyd says. “But you drive around now and those old signs are gone. They’re in collections, they’ve been bought up, or they’ve been stolen. They’re just not there. I think sometimes people look at old pictures of cities and think, ‘Why can’t we have that?’ If you’re going into business, why not make your storefront look great?”
Lloyd was 17 when he started in the sign industry in 1987. He says school wasn’t for him, but doodling always kept his interest. “At the time, signs were all hand-painted,” Lloyd says. “My dad told me, ‘You’re a sign painter.’ So I started looking into it.”
He landed an entry-level job working under Tom Deutschmann, a well-established St. Louis sign painter. Lloyd did a lot of watching in those early years. “And a little bit of getting yelled at,” he says. “Eventually, you start to catch on.”The intricate details of each sign drew him in. Lloyd studied the gentle curves of the alphabet and played with different layouts—the key to a quality sign. A great layout, Lloyd says, can elevate even the most basic lettering. As he learned the trade, Lloyd quickly realized how often he thought about designs. Signs were all that was on his mind.
“Some people are sign weirdos,” he says. “At the time, I didn’t know yet that I was a sign weirdo.”
For a young sign painter, St. Louis was a good place to nerd out. It could be argued that the city was the sign-painting capital of the world in the early part of the 20th century. Although guys like Alf Becker and E.C. Matthews aren’t household names, both painters played a crucial role in driving the industry forward while living in St. Louis. Becker and Matthews produced hundreds of stylized alphabets, many of which appeared in the industry’s leading trade publication, Signs of the Times magazine.
“St. Louis had some of the best sign painters around,” Lloyd says. “Other cities, like Chicago, will say the same thing. But we had a lot of sign painters here, I’ll tell you that.”
In the 1990s, the rise of vinyl upended Lloyd’s industry. Vinyl offered a more modern—and in some ways, more predictable and efficient—way for businesses to approach signage. Painters like Lloyd had to find new ways to supplement income. In addition to signs, Lloyd started painting dump trucks. He also found part-time work making tombstones and pouring concrete. Whatever it took to pay the bills.
“But I’ve always hung in there painting,” he says. “Back then, a lot of my customers were a little more hardscrabble. I can’t say that they all knew or cared that they were getting a painted sign. They just knew they needed a sign.”
Instagram changed the game. Lloyd spends at least an hour each day on the platform not only posting updates on his work but also looking for inspiration and—this is crucial—generating leads.
“I watch what’s opening, what’s going out of business, and what storefronts may be appropriate for me, because we get very little work in areas like modern strip malls,” Lloyd says. “I look for areas where a classic sign painter’s work would be appropriate.”
For storefronts, Lloyd strictly uses high-gloss, solvent-based paints with “as many solids in it as the law will allow,” he says. That’s partly because they’re as old-timey as you can get. They’re also durable. For a brick wall, he uses modern latex. When it’s time to paint, Lloyd chooses between two preferred styles: block letters and script—the latter features a heavy bottom and high connection for each letter, and Lloyd has made it all his own. Those ingredients, coupled with Lloyd’s natural talent, have allowed him to craft a distinctive style that is recognizable across the St. Louis region.
“When people say they recognize my work, I kinda like that,” he says. “That’s a thing of the past, where someone could drive around and be able to tell who did what.”
Just like the work of a true artist.
