Welcome again, and thank you so much for visiting SignACTIONProductions.com.
I’m not real sure how this all started… With a sketch, or some colored pencils on my bedroom floor as a child, but I do know where we’re heading.
I come from a family that immerses itself in the local dirt track racing scene. With two generations of DIRT Modified racers, and such a supportive network of parents, siblings and extended family, auto racing becomes a large part of your life. (I’m sure many of you reading this can relate.)
At about 10, I became obsessed with designing my big brother’s next paint scheme. Most were ignored early on, as fantastic and incredibly talented artists like “Custom” Bob Neimetz and Barney’s Sign painted and lettered his sportsman cars. That would all change in high school.
Finally, the drawings began to influence the outcomes of the products each sign maker did for our race team’s cars.
It wasn’t long before I wished to do the work myself.
My other brother’s high school graduation gift, a four-cylinder enduro car, needed paint and numbers. For two days I worked feverishly at the neighbor’s farm cutting the vinyl lettering by hand with an x-acto knife and sheetrock blade. I was ecstatic…
I kept drawing, designing, and annoying my high school art teacher with my motorsports ambitions.
In 2002, my uncle gifted me his Street Stock car as a graduation present. While the car wasn’t much, I began cutting and painting in my back yard. I knew then I wanted to start my own sign business.
Not until four years later, would I try again. My good friend Pat DeBerry had been open for a short time before inviting me into his sign shop. I soon planted roots into his successful Two Star Graphics Company. After several attempts to work with other sign shops for free, Pat had afforded me the ability to learn the business and to learn the building blocks of design work. I’ll be forever in debt to the opportunity Two Star presented me, an opportunity many (whom I look up to) scoffed at and refused when asked for.
It wasn’t to long after that a race team I had been helping approached me about becoming an “in-house” letterer of their race cars. If I ventured at it alone, I wanted to do it my way.
Thirsting for some artistic independence, I made the hardest business decision that I have made even until present day; I would leave Two Star Graphics in the winter of 2007.
Setting up shop in a small warehouse space in Johnstown, NY, I opened SignACTION Productions in January of 2008. My logo, a play on the “Hollywood hills and lights,” was to signify that every customer would be treated like a star, and I’d try my damnedest to make their car, trailer or sign look like a star.
Before leaving the shop, that I have since moved to the Gage Racing Facility in Altamont, NY, each race car is given a final sticker. A serial number and barcode. Every design is different, every customer is different, and we like it that way! We’re not just lettering cars and making signs, we’re building a brand.
Thanks again for visiting our new online home… Let us know when your ready for more than a lettering job.
All the Best,
Mike A. Jackson
