Jay Dugan of Radical Design Group

Every sign designer, every graphic designer, seems to remember what it was that inspired them to get into visual communication. For Jay Dugan, like quite a few others, it was racecars.

Jay’s uncle raced stock cars, and when one was ready to get lettered, Jay often skipped school so he could take in the whole event. By the time he was in high school he was lettering cars in the world of motorsports, and that pushed him into the world of signs and graphic design. As Radical Design Group, he specialized in racecar graphics, doing 150 cars or more per year.

For the past three years he worked fulltime with Rich Dombey of Rich Designs in Hillsboro, New Jersey, after helping out part-time for several years. Now, at 32, he’s devoting his full attention to Radical Design Group and the motorsports industry. SignCraft talked with Jay between projects on a busy afternoon.