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Painting a Few Signs with Paul Bruggeman

By Fresh Produce

Caucasian man in a black shirt and hat stands in front of a window painted with the words 'Extra Special' in a gold color.

 

Since the mid-’80s, Paul Bruggeman (Bruggeman Signs) has brightened the Sioux Falls area landscape as a sign painter. From Sunshine Foods to 18-wheel trucks, Paul’s work as a graphic artist brings a handcrafted warmth that’s slowly disappeared from the advertising landscape. This summer, our Famous internship team hired Paul to advertise our one-day, Fast Produce radio advertising sale. We loved his work so much that he’s been a fixture of Ipso Gallery ever since, painting signs for White Ribbon, Mystic Hollow, and our latest show, Extra Special.

 

To learn more about Paul, he sat down with us in our studio to discuss his career path, what he thinks about while he paints, and why sign painting is an effective medium. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

When did you develop an affinity for art?
Paul Bruggeman: It was probably in childhood. You start drawing and just kind of start doing your thing. I specialized more in automotive stuff–building model cars and painting them. And then in high school, I painted some cars for friends and a tractor for my dad.

How did you teach yourself how to paint cars?
PB: My dad had a spray gun kickin’ around. I don’t recall exactly, but I thinned out some Van Sickle tractor paint with some mineral spirits–it’s all really low-tech. We started with painting models, then painting bikes with spray cans. That’s where the spray part kind of started to click in. I had some older brothers that did a little body work–real hotrod stuff. And then a friend of mine got an old Volkswagen Beetle, and so we did the body white and added flames with purple spray cans.
Caucasian man in a black shirt and hat stands smiles.

Did you train anywhere or are you self-taught?
PB: I worked outside for a year siding houses and decided I needed to go to school to get an inside job. I went through Southeast Tech. Their ad design program instructor, Terry Roisum, was an old sign painter. In fact, he did show cards in that for television (KSOO-TV) before there were computerized graphics. He was a pretty skilled show card artist and showed me a few things on the side.

I just kind of wanted to get into art. We didn’t have any computer training in school. It was all cut and paste and, you know, a crash course in illustration and they even had an airbrush there. I like drawing with pencil a lot. That’s what I always wanted to do. I’ve always liked painting–moving paint around. So then I started painting a few signs.
Do you have anybody who was an initial inspiration to you?
PB: There’s actually a guy from California, Nick Barber. He’d be in the SignCraft Magazine, that’s a trade magazine for sign people. I’d see his stuff and it’s interesting.

Where else do you draw inspiration?
PB: My daughter lives in St. Paul and there’s a railroad track outside her apartment. I study tagging on rail cars. There’s some real talent out there. I mean, the highlights they use and, you know, I see a lot of trends in that now that–it’s just kind of everywhere. Lately, I’ve been looking at Ed Hopper. He had some really cool stuff.

What was your first gig out of Southeast Tech?
PB: I worked at Ace Signs here in Sioux Falls for two years. I was their sign painter. Back then, all the lettering was hand-lettered except for maybe a few transfers. Then I worked in Colorado at a sign shop for a year and got laid off. I moved back here and started doing inflatable beer cans for Raven. That was a big deal back in the mid-’80s. They’d have them at racetracks. We were painting stuff like Budweiser and Pabst Blue Ribbon cans.
Man wearing a black stocking hat and black coat mixes paint from the side of a van.
At what point did you start your own business?
PB: Well, I got laid off from the last company I worked for in Sioux Falls. There were some Pepsi billboards around on the interstate, they just said “Pepsi,” so I approached them about doing those. And that’s when I just went on full on my own. My instructor, Terry Roisum, said there’s a lot of freedom in the graphics business. You can kind of work at your own pace and do your own thing. I do a lot of stuff now where I don’t necessarily do the artwork, I’m just producing it. But it’s fun to design a logo or pick colors and that kind of stuff. I started doing a lot of racecars, a lot of 18-wheeler trucks–they all needed their ICC numbers and that–and they’d have some pinstripes.

What’s the spectrum of work you do when sign painting?
PB: I did some signs for the city dump that were just two-inch white copy on a green background–monotonous things like that. But some of the over-the-road trucks, you’d do two or three colors on the name and a lot of shading and pinstriping. They get pretty elaborate.

Do you still do a fair amount of auto painting?
PB: No, you just get tired of learning all the new tricks because you’ve just really got to follow the trends. And the custom painting, you’d think it’d be the most glamorous work on some of these Harleys, but it just takes a lot of time and it’s got to be show quality, you know. You’ve got to almost follow them guys. I said, I don’t have enough tattoos, you know, because it’s like you kind of got to live their life, too.
What do you think about when you’re painting?
PB: Yeah, I don’t know. I like to listen to Spotify.
What were you listening to today?
PB: Actually, it was Quentin Tarantino movie soundtracks, which is kind of fun because he’s got kind of a dark–well, not necessarily–I mean, he’s just a lot of a lot of b-side stuff, you know? It was just songs from all kinds of his movies, like Pulp Fiction. They were playing a Neil Diamond song, Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon. But yeah, just all kinds of stuff.

Why do you think sign painting is an effective medium?
PB: When you create something from hand, there’s just more of a warmth and more of a personality. Because I’ve got fonts I use for windows that I probably don’t use on anything else. I’ve developed a few fonts that, to me, are fun and they’re also fast to produce–that’s kind of the key. I don’t know what it is. It just looks like fun and friendly and, you know, gorgeous. The colors are bright.

Have you developed your own font systems?
PB: You borrow from other people and they’re not necessarily new. But yeah, you’ll just do little notches in letters or scripts to put your own little spin on them. I mean, there’s zillions of fonts and most of them are based on four or five serifs, sans serifs, and block scripts.

Do you have a favorite font?
PB: Ah, not really, no. I like loose, bouncy script lettering.

Where else can people see your work?
PB: In Sioux Falls, mainly Sunshine Foods downtown and I do some stuff for Billion Automotive. The city changed its ordinance where now they started requiring a permit, so it just start taking more time and started not being worthwhile. So a lot of my stuff is in smaller towns.
What’s it been like to interpret artwork for Ipso Gallery? 
PB: Since I’m kind of reproducing your ideas, it’s just trying to keep it so that they don’t get too complex and, you know, these are a little higher than what I normally work on. When I originally talked to Fresh Produce, I said, “Well, I don’t really like to get much over a couple of rungs up on a six-foot stepladder,” and so now I’m dragging out my ten-foot stepladder. Most windows are lower to the ground–grocery stores and car dealers–I mean, that’s my main deal.