Straight to Your Inbox SBI Update, Sign Builder Illustrated’s monthly e-newsletter, delivers the latest hot topics and news from around the sign industry right to your email Sign up at www.signshop.com
Meet Dawn VanDerwarker Dawn VanDerwarker opened her oneperson shop, Creative DeSIGNS and Concepts, back in 2006 in North Hudson, New York, a small town with a population of 240. She started off with truck lettering and political signs but soon made the leap into a field that’s always held her fascination, dimensional signage. But being located in a small community meant having to concentrate on area-appropriate pricing (in order to complete enough such jobs to build up her portfolio). Through word of mouth, she worked on enough dimensional signage by 2010 to be able to relocate with her husband to larger Kingsbury, New York. Instead of paying rent for a store, Vanderwarker opted to operate out of her family’s two-car garage. Up until the Word of Life’s main entrance sign job, Vanderwarker primarily used a twenty-four-inch plotter working off of FlexiSIGN-PRO 8.5 to make her vinyl signs and silkscreen stenciling. In addition to her three chisels, other inshop tools include a basic table saw, a chop saw, and a band saw. Because of the CNC router, VanDerwarker is also having to work out of her fixer-upper farmhouse. “I set [it] up in a 14-by-20-foot spare room that we hadn’t renovated yet,” she says, “while I use my garage to chisel, assemble, and paint signs. For the WOL project, I had to position the machine just right to fit the eight-foot panels through it, so I could tile all the pieces.” In the near future, she plans to renovate her garage to be able to complete everything in one space.
38
Sign Builder Illustrated // November 2013
signshop.com