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I always wonder how persons put together a name for their business. I for one, had my business name given to me from folks who wanted more then just basic pinstriping with basic red, black or white colors. Since my design work was different then most, people always called my work Hot ot HotLines, and it just stuck.
Whats your trip?
-------------------- HotLines Joey Madden - pinstriping since 1952 'Perfection, its what I look for and what I live for'
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I started off doing photorealistic renderings using 3D Modeling/Animation software and that's where the name "Digital Illusion" came from, but when I got into making paint masks for mine and my buddies' vehicles before I ever got into the business, my buddies nicknamed me stickerpimp and it "stuck".
-------------------- "If I share all my wisdom I won't have any left for myself."
Mike Pipes stickerpimp.com Lake Havasu, AZ mike@stickerpimp.com Posts: 8746 | From: Lake Havasu, AZ USA | Registered: Jun 2000
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-------------------- Pierre St.Marie Stmariegraphics Kalispell,Mt www.stmariegraphics.com ------------------ Plan on knowing everything before I die and time's running out! Posts: 4223 | From: Kalispell,Mt 59903 | Registered: Mar 2000
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Mine just seemed to say it all... now it'll be hard for people to forget my shop name...
"What was the name of that sign guy's shop? oh yeah."
-------------------- -------------------- Dave Cox C2 Media Services (Formerly That Sign Guy) dave@c2mediaservices.com -------------------- Full Color Printing Posts: 295 | From: Sacramento CA | Registered: Jan 2003
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""Good judgment comes from experience; and a lot of that comes from bad judgment" - Will Rogers Posts: 3486 | From: Beautiful Newaygo, Michigan | Registered: Mar 2003
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i got 2 names.. A SIGN MINT,play on the word assignment,a task to de done, job to do, something that has to be completed. i explain my name this way to people..."like the word assignment....but iam like the MINT(place that make coins)i try to make a buck or 2." my mobile shop is SIGNS HERE & NOW, self explanitory. i coundnt put A SIGN MINT on the side of the truck, people would just think is a normal company truck. and i live 50 miles from MOBILE, AL. so i couldnt use the word mobile. also iam one step closer then SIGNS NOW....IAM HERE & NOW!!!!
-------------------- joe pribish-A SIGN MINT 2811 longleaf Dr. pensacola, fl 32526 850-637-1519 BEWARE THE TRUTH.....YOU MAY NOT LIKE WHAT YOU FIND Posts: 11582 | From: pensacola, fl. usa | Registered: Nov 1998
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Funny, I always wanted to name myself St. Marie Graphics, but some self centered prima donna took it. I went for the unassuming Wright Signs. Can't remember how I came up with it.
-------------------- Wright Signs Wyandotte, Michigan Posts: 2785 | From: Wyandotte, MI USA | Registered: Jan 1999
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Pulled mine out of thin air. Did not want to do a fictiious name search so figure who in their right mind would ever name a sign business Skywatch Signs?
Over the years I've had a few calls to see if I towed banners behind a plane or was a skywriter.
Once people learn I was an avid skydiver they go "oh yeah now I get it"
-------------------- Bob Stephens Skywatch Signs Zephyrhills, FL
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I tried on the last name thing, only briefly (seconds), too easy to for people to misspell in a bad sort of way ( drop the C, change the U to an I). DZines is one of those criptic things you could see on a personalized (vanity) license plate, and according to Google, was not used for a sign shop anywhere. Works for me.
-------------------- "Are we having fun yet?" Peter Schuttinga DZines Sign Studio 1617 Millstream rd Victoria BC V9B-6G4 Posts: 521 | From: Victoria BC | Registered: Mar 2002
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The business name was based on the street address and originally I did design and prepress work.
The "Rapid" nickname, which has become more recognized than the business name, came from retired Nascar Busch North driver Stanley, "Stub" Fadden.
Stubby was working under the hood of a race car one night when I showed up to redo the numbers on it. I had a 4" house brush and some Dupont Acrylic Enamel, pounded the paint on in about 20 minutes, and left. Stubby never took his head out from under the hood until a few minutes after I'd left. When he saw the change, he said "We should call him "Rapid Ray".
The next morning I went back to pick up a ruler I had left there, and the name had already stuck.
It has gotten shaved down to "Rapid" over the years.
-------------------- Ray Rheaume Rapidfire Design 543 Brushwood Road North Haverhill, NH 03774 rapidfiredesign@hotmail.com 603-787-6803
I like my paint shaken, not stirred. Posts: 5648 | From: North Haverhill, New Hampshire | Registered: Apr 2003
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at day job, many years ago,we had a big screen (60x80ish) hinged up and flood coated, we use a pulley system to hold them up as we register materials, rope pulled out of screen frame ... SLAM ... left an ink impression so we named the process New York slam printing ... SlamGraphics was the natural progression
-------------------- Compulsive, Neurotic, Anti-social and Paranoid ... but basically Happy Posts: 2677 | From: Rochester, NY, USA | Registered: Nov 1998
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REBEL AIR ~ Rebel with a cause, and a loaded airbrush!... I'm stuck in the 50's... James Dean... I named my dog Rebel... Then named new 1 acer home Rebel Ridge after dog ... So people started calling me Rebel... That lead to nameing the shop Rebel Air. ( I hope it fits because I'm stuck with it now)
-------------------- REBEL with a cause, and a loaded Airbrush! Posts: 73 | From: Ruthven Ont. Can. | Registered: Aug 2002
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simply not ordinary(haha)...let's see..i believe i was doing bong hits with a friend at the kitchen table....didn't quite know what i wanted to do when i grew up...didn't want to limit myself so i kept it open for anything...it's worked so far and people agree that the name fits me.
-------------------- Karyn Bush Simply Not Ordinary, LLC Bartlett, NH 603-383-9955 www.snosigns.com info@snosigns.com Posts: 3516 | From: Bartlett, NH USA | Registered: Jan 2001
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All of my life growing up I played sports(baseball, softball, football, soccer, and basketball) I would always get the #1, because of my favorite professional baseball player, Bobby Richardson. He played 2nd base for the N.Y. Yankees in the 50's and 60's. He is my second cousin. When I started my business, I thought it would be a neat name. I didn't even consider it to be an arrogant name for a business, just continuing a tradition. Now I wish I had come up with something cool like Indocilart or something. I know mine is corny, but not for the reasons most people would think, but it works for now.
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way back when, devo named his business 'Dave Beattie Signs' gee thats original...not!
then when we went to live in New Zealand we called the business Eureka Signs so named after the revolt to the military in australia in the late 1800's...when the poor folk rose up and said 'We will not be treated this way' one of devo's ancestors was involved in that, a mr james beattie, so we figured it suited us having left Oz n all hehehe
when we came back though a few years later, we added screenprinting to the list of stuff we did, as the design n screenprinting was mostly for the motorcycle comunity, Roadwarrior Products was a good name cause it covered everything
both devo and I are taureans and when we started the last business in 89 it was in the month of May so Taurus Signcraft seemed to sort of jump out at us
one thing devo always said was, you can't sell dave beattie signs cause it's his own 2 hands, regardless of how many people worked there. but that if you give a business another name that makes it an entity of of it's own, than you have a saleable comodity... not to mention a mid shift to realising that you work for a business that requires so many hours and so much productivity per week to keep growing.
the bonus is that the new owners of Taurus Signcraft (matt and lucy) don't have to keep explaining that dave's not here any more when someone calls asking for the bloke who's name is on the sign
now that devo works for someone else, i have NetdeSign, which covers the work I do designing and building websites. I sort of think the 'sign' part covers the , chalkart and chistmas cutouts I make AirArt its not a trading name, even though it's on the bussiness cards, it's just what we call the part that deals with airbrushing motorcycles that I do.
all in all I can't remember who I am most days let alone what business name i'm supposd to be using hehehe
cheers gail
-------------------- Gail & Dave Hervey Bay Qld Australia
gail@roadwarriorproducts.com.au
sumtimes ya just gota! Posts: 794 | From: 552 O'Regans Creek Rd Toogoom Qld 4655 Australia | Registered: Nov 1998
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Let's see----What's in a name? A rose by any other name would still---oh, sorry, different deal.
Well, what is in a name? IMLTHO, not as much as one might think. Sure, some are cute, and catchy, and this is all well and good. I've just sort of plodded along for the last you don't want to know how many years with bill's Signs, and finally did a DBA with the county after I don't know how long. The lower case "b" in bill's is not an accident--I just don't take me too seriously.
Reputation is probably as important as biz name, if not more so. Someone here on the BB has said a business without a sign is a business without any business. I haven't had a sign in front of my place since 1967, and still manage to get along reasonably well. No newspaper ads, no yellow pages,----zip. Sorry, I lied-- the truck is lettered, colorful but small.
I think as much as anything, decent work at a price fair and agreeable to all concerned has been what has kept the biz going all these years.( Notice I didn't say work that rates as this month's centerfold in Signcraft. I have no illusions along those lines.)
Either that, or, I have fooled the bejeepers out of a lot of people for a real long time.
FWIW, "image" is a word I learned to cordially detest for personal reasons many years ago. It came to mean a very distorted picture of reality.
-------------------- Bill Preston Fly Creek, N.Y. USA Posts: 943 | From: Fly Creek, N.Y. USA | Registered: Jan 2000
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NeoDutch Practioner of Modern Pinstriping and Eccentric Sign Painter
I figured there were already enough Vons out there. Von Franco, Von Weirdo, Von Von, Von Differential Housing. I prefer bikes and guns to Hot Rods (I have a 1911 with flames bead blasted into the spring tunnel). I love making stuff out of metal and big metal working machines are cool. Try expaining to a layperson that the 30 lines per inch checkering in the frontstap of your custom handgun (that's 900 square based pyramids cut into steel every square inch folks.) was cut entirely by hand with a file. The eccentric part is there so I don't have to explain why I charged you $300 for a striping job and that other bloke got his for free. I'm more like Dutch than the people at "Von Dutch Originals" anyhow.
-------------------- Army Dave Oz Posts: 229 | From: Brisbane, Oz | Registered: Feb 2002
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In the eighties when I started painting windows, we were "Splash Window Decorating Team"(my husband and I)...but that was too long a name so I cut it back to Splash Window Painting...then when I started doing other signage, vinyls, murals I made it simply Splash Signsand I think it suits me just fine.
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In '77 I was doodling with coloured pencils....Brushworks came out. In '82 I stared working out of my basement....Brushworks. Sold Brushworks Advertising Inc. in 2000. I'm now BIG TOP Graphics... named after my '93 GMC van with a BIG TOP! SignRider is a division of BIG TOP Graphics.... in my Head?!? cause I ride mtb and paint signs. All very logical, but not very Serious.
John Lennig / SignRider
-------------------- John Lennig / Big Top Sign Arts 5668 Ewart Street, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada bigtopya@hotmail.com 604.451.0006 Posts: 2184 | From: Burnaby, British Columbia,Canada | Registered: Nov 2001
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It's 1979, and I'm listening to George Harrison's "All Things Must Pass" almost daily. There's this great cut, "Apple Jam".
That's where the "Jam" came from in Cocoanut Jam Sign and Design. The Cocoanut...I just happened across an article about the ever-changing english language, and it turns out that in 1961, the year I was born, Webster's Dictionary dropped the "a" from what was now "Coconut".I put the "a" back.
Ya'd hafta know where my brain was in the late 70's.....
Our other shop, "AutoGraph Customs" is pretty self-evident.
and personally, I was still working under the moniker "The Brisko Kid" (a play on "Cisco Kid", last name Briskie) in the mid eighties, when an NHRA announcer, Mike Paz, hung the nickname on me "Brian the Brush".
What a long strange trip it's been.
Keep on keepin' on,
Brian Briskie
Posts: 465 | From: / | Registered: Jan 2000
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I'va always just used my name. Not original for sure but it cuts down on the confusion . When I first started getting into striping real heavily, I noticed a lot of stripers worked under nicknames and was considering using one. Then I ran accross Rick Harris from Nashville, he worked under his own name. I figured if it was good enough for a guy of his caliber it was good enough for me. Unfortunately, there is still an opportunity for confusion. A few years back there was a striper in the area named Greybeard.
-------------------- George Perkins Millington,TN. goatwell@bigriver.net
"I started out with nothing and still have most of it left"
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I went with Creative Signs in 92 since I wanted it simple, but to let the general public know I wasn't a stickie quickie shop either, and there was some artwork available to them, not just a bland sign as some would ask for. Always being interested in doing something different, more colorful, sometimes 3D: that was my passion. Sure there were a lot of either signfolks or artists around town, but not too many that offered both, and certain parts of the country surely needed a shot in the arm of pizazz. There was another sign shop in Ohio that wanted that name badly and did apply under it and the state made them stop since I had it. Wow, I was surprised that I chose it first, such a common name. Well, I am gone from that state as of last year, and I bet they are thrilled to finally get that name. good for them.
Still, now that I moved to a new state, I think I may have to change it, since someone here may have it now, and that would be fine too. It is going to be refreshing , and I have to say, I have been really impressed with some of the names I've heard here on the bb and around the world. And I'll always match a name with some character I've met here. Kind of a word association process.
-------------------- Deb Fowler
"It's kind of fun to do the impossible - Walt Disney (1901-1966) Posts: 5373 | From: Loves Park, Illinois | Registered: Aug 1999
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