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Sign Maker enjoys expressing his creativity
An exterior wall from the old Stockyards Restaurant in Danville, a counter from an old store in Hustonville, a customized swordfish and clock and a sign referring to the circus and the skills of the ringmaster, Kirby Stafford, all are details that make his place on Dillehay Street unique.
It’s all a collection from his almost 40-year career in Danville. “In 1977, I started my own place down here. Been here ever since. Just a one-man operation with a little help every once in a while,” Stafford said. “With a little help from my friends.” It all began when he was at Boyle County High School. There, Stafford found his interest in art. “My senior year, the art teacher suggested I might do that for a living. At the time, I didn’t have any other plans, so when I graduated at Boyle County, I got a job at Popeye’s Sign Co. in Lexington and learned the trade up there,” he said. That was right after he married his wife, Melinda. After about a year, Stafford returned to Danville and launched his business. At the time, he never gave much thought to what it could be. “When you start your business at 22 years old, you don’t really think that far ahead, you just are trying to put food on the table at the time.” “We bought our first house, I started my business and we had our one and only son all within a week,” he said. “I was so young at the time, it didn’t even bother me. Now, it would probably freak me out.”
Stafford’s son, Scott, has inherited his creative interest. Scott is part of the team behind Walk Softly Films, and Stafford has helped out from time to time. “I enjoy helping — sometimes run the camera while he’s in the scene,” Stafford said. Photos of his parents, Everett and Evona, sit on his counter. It was their move to Danville that brought him here, as he was born shortly after. “I was almost born in California, San Diego. If my parents stayed out there two more weeks, I would have been born in California,” Stafford said. His business is located in his dad’s former auto body shop and still holds some of that atmosphere. Stafford’s customer base has grown and now stretches up and down the eastern United States. He’s traveled as far away as Grand Rapids, Michigan, to paint a sign and as far south as Alabama to detail a car.
“When you’ve been in the business as long as I have, you know a lot of people,” he said. He’s even got friends in high places — sort of. Stafford used to build cars, detail cars and more, and wound up selling one of his vehicles to Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top. “I’ve pinstriped probably six of his guitars for him,” Stafford said. These days, he doesn’t build cars from the frame up any more. “The sign business got so busy, I had to quit that,” he explained. “The reason I liked building cars is the creativity. You can just build things up from scratch. You’ve got to use your imagination in building things like that,” Stafford said. “And I’ve just started building the signs like that now — I still get to use my creativity in building new signs that look old.” Having an aged or vintage look seems to be the thing these days. “There must have been a law back in the ‘50s — no square signs allowed,” he said with a smile.
Making new signs that look old seems to be the trend now, and hand-lettering seems to be making a comeback. Much of his business has come from within Kentucky, the biggest project on a wall in Louisville. “It was 50 feet to the top,” he said. One letter, a capital “C”, is 12-15 feet tall — a rather tricky feat. “When you get a circle as big as that right there, it’s hard to make it a circle.” He starts by creating a scale and breaking the sign into grids. “I have people say, ‘how do you figure all of that out?’ and I say, ‘I don’t know, I just do,’” he said, laughing. “I like to never got through math in school.” Stafford uses the Internet a lot to look up the styles of old signs. He uses new technologies, such as LED lights and LED message boards, pairing those with older-inspired designs, a mixture of the old and new. His work can be found throughout Boyle, Casey and beyond. “I don’t know if I’ve really done anything strange. Maybe I’m immune to it and don’t think anything is strange,” he said. Different is good in his world. “That’s what I try to do. I just do something different than everybody else. I think that’s paid off,” he said. “If it’s a challenge, I like it. If nobody’s done it before, I like to do it. “I don’t ever mind getting up and coming to work, because it’s not really work to me. It’s something fun I do and get paid to do.”
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