338.03 Type Zine 2016 by Shania Cheng

says. “We’re all just picking up our tools and going for it.” He recalls that when he approached a member of the old guard to ask if he had any advice about joining the profession, the man said, “Yeah: Don’t do it.”

Apprenticeships do seem rarer and less necessary these days. And only one school in the country still focuses on teaching the craft—Los Angeles Trade Technical College, which offers a two-year associate’s degree in Sign Graphics. “I considered it, but I was already getting work,” says the artist BT Livermore of Minnesota and now Portland. Other sign painters hadn’t heard of the school’s program at all. Most of “That ability, to make a living doing them have Bachelor’s something they love, has made this degrees as well as generation of sign-makers optimistic.”

Master’s or MFAs, so they wondered why they should take out more loans when they can simply prove themselves through their output and still get enough clients to make a living.

That ability, to make a living doing something they love, has made this generation of sign-makers optimistic.

Sincich and Stover say that, based on current conditions, they “don’t see how they wouldn’t be able to make a 60 TYPOGRAPHIC MAGAZIN E