The Noble Art of NYC Restaurant Signs | NYT Cooking

[00:00:00]“Signs are usually seen in a glance.

[00:00:05]You need to catch someone’s attention in an instant, and you need to communicate.

[00:00:10]This amazing vernacular culture of New York signage, it was a vanishing before our eyes.”

[00:00:15]“On this block alone, there are so many signs like that, but I wonder if any of them were made in this century.

[00:00:22]Every sign that’s made by hand represents the business owner, their personalities, their diverse backgrounds.

[00:00:32]We want them to be iconic.

[00:00:33]And so, for businesses to be iconic and for locations to be iconic, we have to create signage that fills in that blank.”

[00:00:56]“Hey, Nick.

[00:00:57]Good morning.

[00:00:58]David from New York Sign Museum.”

[00:01:00]“Yeah, I know.

[00:01:00]I remember.”

[00:01:01]“Yeah, good to see you again.

[00:01:02]My name is David.

[00:01:03]I’m the principal and head of design at Noble Signs and the director of the New York Sign Museum.

[00:01:09]So I know there’s a lot of great memories here, a lot of great stories, and this place is, like, bursting with your energy and your personality.

[00:01:15]And I feel like, if the signs can live on in this collection, like, people will be able to keep that legacy alive, keep the story alive, the memory alive.

[00:01:24]I still know the feeling all too well, a storefront that had a sign that you loved, and then you just walked by one day, and it’s gone.

[00:01:31]And it’s just like, your heart sinks into your stomach.”

[00:01:34]“So I talked to my other two partners.”

[00:01:37]“O.K.”

[00:01:38]“And we’re keeping the sign.”

[00:01:39]“O.K. So there’s three signs on the building.

[00:01:41]You’re trying to save all three of them?”

[00:01:43]“Yeah.

[00:01:44]You want to preserve it.

[00:01:45]You know, we want to preserve it, too, you know?”

[00:01:48]“O.K.”

[00:01:48]“So if anything changes, I have your number, you know?”

[00:01:52]“O.K.”

[00:01:52]“O.K.”

[00:01:55]“When we first started saving signs, I think it was mostly about the sign, and I didn’t really consider the deeper meaning.

[00:02:03]New York Sign Museum lives simultaneously within the noble sign space.

[00:02:06]We overlap.

[00:02:07]I joke that everything above shoulder height is a museum, and everything below is shop space.

[00:02:13]I’m Mac.

[00:02:14]I’m one of the two principals here at Noble Signs and the director of operations.”

[00:02:18]“We work with all kinds of businesses in New York City.

[00:02:21]We love working with mom and pop shops, local restaurants, bars, coffee shops, bodegas, retail shops, and we really try to incorporate as many voices as we can into our creative process.”

[00:02:36]“Chris, a hand-painted acrylic, how low do you want them to pounce at?”

[00:02:41]“I'd do 80.

[00:02:45]My name is Chris.

[00:02:46]I am the lead sign painter at Noble Signs.

[00:02:50]The nice part of my job is actually when I get to sit down with the brush and do some actual brush work and painting and stuff, so --” “I read something online, where, like, an old timer claims to -- he said he always licked his pen.

[00:03:05]My name is Logan.

[00:03:07]I do fabrication at Noble Signs.”

[00:03:10]“One time, he just licked one of these.”

[00:03:12]“Yeah.”

[00:03:13]“Like, died.”

[00:03:13]“Remember one time I drank tapping fluid by accident.

[00:03:16]My name’s Ed.

[00:03:17]I’m one of the painters here at Noble.

[00:03:20]I do a good amount of fabrication, installation, a lot of on site painting.

[00:03:25]I’ll go up the ladders when it’s real cold out.”

[00:03:28]“My day to day is often similar, but it’s never the same.

[00:03:32]No safety switch or anything.

[00:03:33]There’s just a button you can accidentally push.

[00:03:35]I don’t know.

[00:03:36]I’m sure it’s not, like, the worst thing to have touch you, but yeah, you just use it to test the glass.”

[00:03:44]“My name is Bobby, and I’m a fabricator.

[00:03:46]So my job is to build the signs out and do neon.

[00:03:51]There’s always something coming up.

[00:03:54]We’re like firefighters.

[00:03:56]There’s always a fire to take out.”

[00:04:00]“We go all hands for a sign save like this.

[00:04:03]Definitely over 20 feet wide, maybe even close to 30.

[00:04:07]It’s been on my radar for a long time.”

[00:04:09]“It doesn’t look like it.”

[00:04:11]“Not too bad.”

[00:04:12]“I don’t want to say that out loud.”

[00:04:14][LAUGHS] “Don’t say it out loud.

[00:04:15]We’re going to jinx it.

[00:04:18]My name is Victor.

[00:04:18]I’m what they call is a wall dog, somebody who paints exterior surfaces outside, like brick wall, things like that, the large format murals.”

[00:04:27]“I think we just take a putty knife behind it and just rush it off.”

[00:04:31]“What material did you bring to patch?”

[00:04:33]“We’re going to go buy Bi Bond once we know how big the hole is.”

[00:04:36]“That makes sense.”

[00:04:37]“Halfway through my freshman year of college, there was a guy in my Japanese class.

[00:04:41]For one reason or another, he just said, ‘I think you should meet my roommate, Mac.

[00:04:45]I feel like you guys have a lot in common.’ I think because he thought we were both weirdos.”

[00:04:49]“We sort of instantly clicked over the idea that we liked making books.

[00:04:53]We were into type.

[00:04:54]We were into layout.”

[00:04:55]“Actually, the grandson of Louis Zuflacht, he reached out.

[00:04:59]His grandfather and his great uncle, they were tailors, and they opened this shop.

[00:05:03]Somebody told them that the building was being torn down.

[00:05:06]I heard about the sign museum.

[00:05:07]Asked us if we could try to save the signs.

[00:05:09]Mac?”

[00:05:12]“When do these things actually start coming off?

[00:05:15]How long?

[00:05:15]Like, an hour?”

[00:05:16]“We don’t know.

[00:05:17]As I said to Bobby just now, if we find one screw in the wrong place, it could add an hour.”

[00:05:21]“There’s no room for error.

[00:05:23]If you do the job correctly, it’s a five minute job.

[00:05:25]If you mess up the job, you’re going to be there all day.”

[00:05:28]“There’s always surprises with these things, so -- You never know what you’re dealing with when you’re dealing with, like, signs that have been on a building for 70, 80 years.

[00:05:36]One thing you can assume is that they’re on there pretty good.”

[00:05:39]“What is all that? Is that all construction adhesive?

[00:05:42]Ugh, oh man.

[00:05:43]They glued this [BLEEP] on so bad.

[00:05:45]Oh, my God, it’s in terrible shape.”

[00:05:49]“Some days, you’re, like, questioning your life decisions, when you’re standing on a ladder in the rain for six hours, trying to unwedge a sign that you, finally, realize was cemented to the building, and it’s never coming down.”

[00:06:00]“Oh, I wonder if there’s a hole behind it.”

[00:06:02]“Fortunately, today’s been a good day.

[00:06:04]It’s a beautiful sign, beautiful day.

[00:06:07]There’s these really cool key pieces on the end that say, 154.

[00:06:10]That’s the address.

[00:06:11]Smart Clothes, I think that’s been one of the things that makes this sign so beloved is just that expression, like smart clothes.

[00:06:18]Like, I don’t know what it means exactly.”

[00:06:21]“Amazing.

[00:06:22]They witted it already.

[00:06:23]That’s why we don’t buy Bi Bond beforehand.

[00:06:27]Saved us $450, because these letters aren’t coming off right now.”

[00:06:31]“Just leave it on for now.”

[00:06:33]“What happened to the F?”

[00:06:35]“They cut it to put the flashing in and totally [BLEEP] it up.

[00:06:39]We got almost the whole first side down, so we’re going to send Ed back with these panels.

[00:06:43]They still have the letters attached, but they’re making progress on them.

[00:06:48]So let’s get this last panel down.”

[00:06:53]“I think most local businesses in New York, they didn’t care about a logo.

[00:06:57]They just wanted to tell people what they did.

[00:07:01]So that’s why you have so many old New York signs that are subject forward.

[00:07:05]It’s like, Joe’s Pizza.”

[00:07:09]“Joe’s, like, steaks, home of Joe’s classic.

[00:07:13]You want it to be, like, prominent that I’m going to Joe’s.”

[00:07:18]“The signage you see now, like modern signage, it’s very brand forward, logo driven.

[00:07:22]You walk through Manhattan now, and you’re going to see a lot of business names, and you’re like, is this a perfume store?

[00:07:28]Is this a clothing store?

[00:07:30]Is this a shoe store?

[00:07:31]Like, if you don’t already know --” “The antithesis to the way that we consider design and the way that we think about our process, which is all about accessibility and opening up that door versus saying, you don’t know the name of this place, so you can’t come in.

[00:07:45][LAUGHS] I’m Blakey, and I’m the Creative Director of Noble Signs.

[00:07:50]You know, if we have a really beautiful, iconic, balanced logo, like from this logo, there’s a place to grow.

[00:07:59]From this logo, there’s a place you’re going.”

[00:08:02]“So excited.”

[00:08:02]“Like, there’s a lot of trailers for this movie.”

[00:08:04]“Yeah.”

[00:08:09]“B1 and 6.”

[00:08:10]“We actually worked with them at our previous restaurant, Kisa.

[00:08:13]They did the sign for us.

[00:08:14]One of the biggest reasons that we picked that location was because the space for the signage.

[00:08:20]I want to put up a sign that only has Korean and one of the biggest crossroads in Manhattan.”

[00:08:28]“Kisa is 100 percent Korean restaurant, because we want to show our heritage and our roots, what we miss from the Korean aspect as a child.

[00:08:36]And now, we’re opening up a third restaurant, Good Time Country Buffet.

[00:08:39]This one is 100% American and Southern.

[00:08:41]All right, I guess this is the space here, and we’re going to try to bring in that cozy, hometown style country buffet here.

[00:08:48]Yeah, we’re going to change our entire storefront.

[00:08:50]That’ll be the big space for the sign.

[00:08:54]The sign space is not big as Kisa, but it is still there.”

[00:08:58]“It’s a good size, and it’s like the kind of middle zone.

[00:09:01]Like, you’re not allowed to do the craziest, biggest sign, but it’s not the most restrictive either.”

[00:09:09]“The first sign that we made was, like, 2010.”

[00:09:12]“Early on, it was just us being asked to make signs for friends who are bar owners.

[00:09:16]When the power got knocked out from Sandy, I hopped on my bike, and I rode up to Amsterdam Ale House for a meeting, driving past, like, National Guard, like handing out water and stuff.

[00:09:27]Afterwards, I called Dave, and I was like, ‘Hey, they want to do this as, like, a branding project.

[00:09:31]Do you want to come on board with me for this?’”

[00:09:33]“We started working out of a shop, but it was really just Mac’s basement in his apartment.”

[00:09:38]“We did the Coney Island Aquarium then, because Sandy had destroyed all his buildings.

[00:09:43]They built a new shark building, and we were working out of an Astro van with just a bunch of stuff.

[00:09:48]It was a really wild experience.”

[00:09:52]“Most of our signs are wide.

[00:09:54]We have, like, 12, 14, 18, 20, 24 foot storefronts.

[00:09:59]When you have those canvases, they naturally lend themselves to a single word spelled out as big as possible.

[00:10:05]I think a good sign is legible.”

[00:10:08]“Legible.”

[00:10:09]“Legible.”

[00:10:09]“A good sign favors legibility, first and foremost.”

[00:10:13]“A good sign is hand-painted, should have a little bit of acrylic on it.”

[00:10:20]“A good sign isn’t red vinyl on white.”

[00:10:25]“The whole world could use less vinyl signage, 100 percent.”

[00:10:31]“It’s so big.”

[00:10:33]“It looks smaller once it’s up there.”

[00:10:34]“I don’t know.

[00:10:35]It looks amazing.”

[00:10:37]“It looks so good, right?”

[00:10:38]“Yeah.

[00:10:39]Like, you never see this anymore.

[00:10:40]This is, like, so old school in the best way.”

[00:10:45]“A good sign is easy to know what that business is offering when you glance at it.”

[00:10:52]“Go ahead.

[00:10:52]You’re good.”

[00:10:53]“It’s closed?”

[00:10:54]“No, no, we’re still open.

[00:10:55]Yeah, yeah, get on in there.

[00:10:57]It did not look like I was going to fit.”

[00:11:01]“A great sign has an anthropomorphic animal on it.

[00:11:06]I think an even greater sign has, like, an anthropomorphic animal cannibalizing itself on it.

[00:11:11]Like, I love, like, a pig eating barbecue or, like, a chicken with fried chicken.

[00:11:17]Those are, like, my favorite signs.

[00:11:22]O.K., so I was in Chinatown Saturday.

[00:11:25]I was hungry, and then I was like, oh, maybe we should just go to this Uncle Lou’s place, because I had some of the leftovers.

[00:11:32]And I was like, it’s good.”

[00:11:38]“We’ve always respected the existing landscape of Chinatown.

[00:11:42]We never really wanted to stand out.

[00:11:48]So we had the old sign since we opened December of 2021.

[00:11:53]Very much a holdover to something more permanent.”

[00:12:01]“But we’ve got an unusual circle here, so we’ll definitely want to pass that to make sure we ran that right.”

[00:12:06]“Uncle Lou’s contacted us probably two months ago now.

[00:12:10]They make a lot of the food from scratch there, and they just want to show all that and show that, while it’s a family-owned business downtown there, it is a little more kitchen driven, even if the menu seems similar to other places.”

[00:12:29]“I grew up in Chinatown, in Lower East Side.

[00:12:32]What we’re seeing is, right now, a lot of signs, they don’t really employ or appreciate hand craftsmanship.

[00:12:40]And for us, that’s what Chinatown was always about.”

[00:12:45]“We were able to get closer to this vision they had for the restaurant that sort of married some of the old, classic Chinatown stuff with sort of a newer, considered vibe.

[00:12:56]We’re, obviously, very type and design driven, but because of that, if we’re going to work with other alphabets, we want to make sure we can be respectful to form and stuff like that.”

[00:13:04]“My name is Francine Zhou.

[00:13:06]I work as an associate designer at Noble Signs.

[00:13:09]I was asked to design a Chinese script for the main logo that goes on the top sign of their store.”

[00:13:17]“Beautiful.

[00:13:18]Man, that’s going to look so good.”

[00:13:20]“And I looked at, oh, Cantonese deli sign design, and I used brush calligraphy to do the design.”

[00:13:28]“Person holding person.”

[00:13:34]“We’ve always wanted to create something that felt like it’s always been here.

[00:13:37]You know, it’s timeless.

[00:13:38]With this sign, we’re hoping to kind of bring about or preserve that type of aesthetic, that look of what Chinatown was, that I knew in the ‘80s or the ‘90s, and it feels like home.”

[00:13:55]“There’s something just so powerful about how a sign can be a symbol for your family’s memories, and your personal history, and your sense of place and belonging.

[00:14:19]We have four boxes like this.

[00:14:22]The collection is, like, mostly from the ‘70s and ‘80s.

[00:14:26]Willow Rosenberg, we don’t know much about her, but I’m guessing she was a prolific shopper.”

[00:14:31]“I don’t think much has changed from this, right?”

[00:14:35]“No.”

[00:14:35]“Like, at all.

[00:14:36]We have to figure out how to keep these, like how to photograph them, how to document them.”

[00:14:41]“With our practice, we think so much about memory and the role of memory and emotion.

[00:14:46]I think food is, like, a great bridge to that, because food is so core to memory.”

[00:14:52]“So, you all grew up in Atlanta?”

[00:14:54]“Yes, we all grew up in Atlanta.”

[00:14:55]“We met when we were, like, 10, 11.”

[00:14:57]“I actually used to be a lot taller than Steve back in the days.

[00:15:00]Something unique about country buffet in Georgia is that it’s actually owned by a lot of Koreans.

[00:15:07]These country buffet are the places that we used to do our birthday party as a child, places that we used to go with our grandparents.

[00:15:13]It brings back a lot of our core memory.”

[00:15:16]“We’re going to go through our new stuff, the logos and some explorations of brand system ideas, some mock ups, and then think about signage.”

[00:15:27]“We’re walking this line, the South in New York City, old and new, homey and classic, but also something that a lot of people in New York, maybe haven’t actually experienced before.

[00:15:40]So it’s like trying to evoke a memory that maybe you actually don’t have.

[00:15:45]From Harlem, M&G Soul Food, I thought this was actually, like, my North Star, especially for the storefront.

[00:15:51]You know, we’re not allowed to make a sign this big anymore, so we had to kind of capture this energy in something that was a little bit more compact.”

[00:15:58]“I imagine myself sitting on one of our banquets at a buffet.

[00:16:02]Like, I can imagine the whole process looking at this logo.

[00:16:05]It’s crazy.”

[00:16:06]“I don’t know if you saw the sign we did for Uncle Lou.

[00:16:09]That sign is, like, trim cap, acrylic lettering with hand-painted, but it’s built on a lightbox frame.

[00:16:14]On this block alone, there are so many signs like that.

[00:16:16]But I wonder if any of them were made in this century.

[00:16:20][LAUGHS] The way these signs were made back in the day, and the reason they have this recurring aesthetic is they were using stock letters and artworks.

[00:16:30]You think about, like, clip art and fonts on your computer.

[00:16:33]These guys had, like, a warehouse full of real life clip art and fonts, and they had a turkey, and here’s a pizza, and here’s a hero.

[00:16:41]And they were going, and picking, and choosing them all, and then just, like, hand laying them out on the buck.”

[00:16:48]“This older dude from Long Island came in and taught us how to do this one day.

[00:16:51]I feel like he would have told me not to do what I just did, because I remember that now.

[00:16:56]Because he’s like, you’ll never bend it.”

[00:17:00]“But with this material, it’s hard to learn.

[00:17:02]Because if you [BLEEP] up, you’re going to waste a lot of material.

[00:17:05]And it’s like, ah.”

[00:17:06]“The nice thing is they always look better 20 feet in the air, so -- [LAUGHS]” “14 more letters to go.

[00:17:12]What is it?”

[00:17:13]“More than that.”

[00:17:14]“So what’s your overall timeline right now?”

[00:17:17]“The thing with any general contractors, they will give you a time, but it’s not going to go at that time.”

[00:17:21]“They’re overly confident.”

[00:17:22]“We are told three months.

[00:17:24]I would say about four and a half.”

[00:17:30]“It looks great in here.

[00:17:31]Big difference than a few weeks ago.”

[00:17:34]“Something about our table color, that’s white, but this ivory color that we have for the table doesn’t really match this.

[00:17:41]It’s too bright.”

[00:17:42]“I appreciate you, man, because these are the kind of things that I think about, and not everybody does.”

[00:17:50]“It matches my fit, too, right now.”

[00:17:51]“Yeah, that actually goes with your fit really well.”

[00:17:54]“That looks great, man.”

[00:17:55]“Here, let me fix the strap.”

[00:17:59][NON-ENGLISH] [NON-ENGLISH] “You kind of look like the Goody bear.”

[00:18:11]“So what’s the date you have from National Grid right now or ConEd?

[00:18:17]They haven’t given you a date yet?”

[00:18:19]“Wish we knew when we’re going to open, but we don’t know yet when we’re going to open.”

[00:18:27]“We’re waiting on approval right now from the city.

[00:18:30]We’re just getting sign offs and stuff, while also trying to stay on our own timelines.

[00:18:35]We, obviously, have limited space.

[00:18:37]These are big signs.

[00:18:38]We can’t have them sitting here forever.”

[00:18:43]“We’ve been around 14 years, so we’ve been involved with hundreds of restaurant openings, and I could probably think of less than five that didn’t have something like this happen.”

[00:18:56]“I’m interested to see what it looks like tomorrow, how much is painted.

[00:19:00]We’ll see.

[00:19:00]We’ll see.”

[00:19:06]“I didn’t mean it.”

[00:19:07]“I got the news.

[00:19:08]I’m going to open it in four to five weeks.”

[00:19:10]“O.K.”

[00:19:10]“We’ll have more time to focus, right?”

[00:19:11]“Yeah.”

[00:19:12]“We’ll have more time to put the signs up.”

[00:19:14]“That’s the silver lining.”

[00:19:15]“Yep.

[00:19:15]This looks really nice, though.”

[00:19:18]“You can’t walk by that and not see it, and it tells you so much about the place.”

[00:19:23]“This is really nice.”

[00:19:24]“That menu is going to do serious work for you guys.”

[00:19:31]“Everybody was calm, so I could bring it in.”

[00:19:33]“Bring him what?”

[00:19:39]“No, my buddy got it for me for the museum.”

[00:19:42]“That’s so cool.”

[00:19:43]“Yeah, it was at some -- it was in a plumber’s office in Bensonhurst.

[00:19:47]I think most people who are really into collecting, it’s because there’s something neurodivergent, right?

[00:19:54]There’s something about your brain.

[00:19:57]Put it in the right slot.

[00:19:58]Most people don’t care if something’s being thrown away, but you’re like, no, I have to save it.

[00:20:04]Like, it becomes this emotional imperative.

[00:20:08]It does work.”

[00:20:12]“I heard from Nick, from Hector’s Diner about a week ago, and it turns out they want to give us the signs.

[00:20:19]It’s like the universe.

[00:20:21]Usually, it happens right around when we’ve had back to back failures, and then something like this happens, where somebody calls me, and they’re like, hey, remember that note you left on my door, like, three years ago?

[00:20:35]Well, I saved it, and I want you to have that sign.

[00:20:40]Sorry, I’m just spotting something.

[00:20:43]Got to take a quick photo.

[00:20:45]Yo, yo.”

[00:20:46]“Hey, how are you?”

[00:20:48]“Hey, Nick.

[00:20:49]Good to see you.”

[00:20:51]“Nice to see you.

[00:20:51]How you doing?”

[00:20:53]“Yeah, good.”

[00:20:54]“Everything good?”

[00:20:54]“How about you?”

[00:20:55]“Good, good.

[00:20:56]The sign and a couple other goodies, I’m going to give you.”

[00:20:59]“Oh, wow.”

[00:21:00]“And I don’t know how you’re setting it up there, but --” “Oh, you got some stools?

[00:21:03]Man, thank you so much.

[00:21:05]Yeah, we really appreciate this.

[00:21:08]In my mind, I picture this, like, network of old signs sitting in people’s backyards and garages and basements.

[00:21:15]And I have faith that, like, the more we build the museum, the more likely it is that those stars will reconnect, and somehow they’ll find their way into our collection.

[00:21:27]Did you guys take them down yourselves or --” “Yeah, I had a guy that does maintenance in the building on 13th Street, and he took them down, yeah.

[00:21:33]I talked with my partners, you know, and I had them here for a bit.

[00:21:37]Because they were like, ‘Oh, hold on to them, hold on to them, hold on to them.’ And then I’m like, listen, they’re just taking up space here.”

[00:21:43]“We really appreciate you, man.”

[00:21:44]“No problem, man.

[00:21:44]No problem.

[00:21:45]I mean, I want them to go somewhere, where people can enjoy them, you know?”

[00:21:49]“They will.”

[00:21:49]“From what you’re telling me.

[00:21:51]And I’m going to come and check on them, O.K.?

[00:21:53]They’re like my babies.”

[00:21:54]“Yes, yes.”

[00:21:55]“I just want to say, as a New Yorker, I partied in that area lot, and I’ve been very drunk in that diner.”

[00:22:02]“Cheeseburgers.”

[00:22:02]“Cheeseburgers were amazing.”

[00:22:24]“Put it back.

[00:22:25]Yeah, it’ll make your lives easier.”

[00:22:38]“It’s always amazing and a little nerve wracking when you see a sign that you’ve been working on for months and months, finally, go up on the wall, because they never looks the way you drew it.

[00:22:51]There’s that moment where you go, oh, that’s what it actually looks like.

[00:22:56]It’s beautiful.

[00:22:57]It’s like a birth.”

[00:23:00]“The B is my favorite stylistically, and the Y is my favorite, because it was the last letter I did.”

[00:23:16]“Wow.”

[00:23:16]“Wow.”

[00:23:19]“It actually looks better than the rendering.”

[00:23:22]“Yeah, for sure.”

[00:23:24]“Definitely looks different when it’s in real life.”

[00:23:27]“We’re from Georgia.”

[00:23:28]“O.K. What part of Georgia?

[00:23:29]Atlanta?”

[00:23:30]“Yeah.”

[00:23:30]“I stayed in Atlanta, Lithonia.”

[00:23:32]“Oh, Lithonia?

[00:23:33]Wow, good.”

[00:23:34]“Yeah.”

[00:23:35]“When I pictured it based on rendering, like, I couldn’t really picture it as how it’s going to look like.

[00:23:40]Really nice.

[00:23:41]I mean, YK’s already being interviewed with people walking by.”

[00:23:45]“You know about Conyers, Georgia?

[00:23:46]Conyers, Georgia.”

[00:23:47]“Yeah, of course.

[00:23:48]Conyers, I used to work there.”

[00:23:50]“Oh, my goodness.”

[00:23:51]“Yeah.”

[00:23:51]“Well, when’s this going to open?”

[00:23:53]“Probably within two months.”

[00:23:55]“O.K., I’ll be here.”

[00:23:57]“Trim of the country.

[00:23:57]Because when you see it from outside, it looks like it’s illuminated.”

[00:24:12]“Let’s not just look at what we’re doing together in a vacuum.

[00:24:16]Let’s look to the world around us.

[00:24:17]Let’s look to our neighbors.

[00:24:19]Let’s look to history.

[00:24:21]And looking to the past, not out of nostalgia, but how we can think about the future by looking at what’s been forgotten, that’s better than the one that we’re in now.

[00:24:34]And we truly believe that the design work we do, and the design at large, has a power to unite people and to create community.”

[00:24:44]“Here we go again.

[00:24:45]My niece, she’ll be like, ‘Hey, Theo.

[00:24:47]Did you make that sign?’ And at first, I’m like, ‘No, what are you talking about?’ And then I looked up.

[00:24:52]I’m like, ‘Oh, actually, I did, and I made that sign.

[00:24:55]I made that sign.

[00:24:56]I fixed that neon.’”

[00:24:57]“Yeah, I mean, you ever meet the old union guys?

[00:25:00]They’ll walk by, and they’ll say, ‘Hey, I did this in this building, I did this in that building.’

[00:25:03]It’s like the same kind of satisfaction you get out of it when you put something up.”

[00:25:06]“It’s amazing.

[00:25:07]It’s my first ever site that I have designed.”

[00:25:11]“Yes.

[00:25:11]Like, we had a hand in helping you realize your dream and then them coming back to us and wanting more signs.”

[00:25:21]“And that’s one thing that’s been really amazing about bringing the museum project into the public eye, is getting to see how these signs represent us.

[00:25:32]They’re carriers of our collective memory.”

[00:25:39]“You did the slow motion.”

[00:25:41]“Yeah.

[00:25:41][LAUGHS]” [MUSIC PLAYING]