Signs of Sanibel Island: Revisited

As many of you know, SignCraft Magazine was born in our 1500-sq.-foot commercial sign shop in Fort Myers, Florida, in 1980. The plan was to share loads of creative examples of creative signs to help inspire other sign makers in their work. That first 20-page black-and-white issue was the first of 235 idea-packed issues over the next 41 years.

Our cover story for that first issue was a feature on the signs of nearby Sanibel Island, a small barrier island with a laid-back tourist-getaway feel. At the time, it was home to several creative sign makers. The funky shops multitude of restaurants provided plenty of opportunities for interesting signage.

As we kick off the online delivery of SignCraft, we thought it would cool to share some of those images that mostly ran in black-and-white in those early days of the magazine. We were able to find out who had made some, but not all, of them back then. Many were the work of the late Vince Brodeur, a very creative sign maker, fine artist and sculptor who lived on Sanibel, and was later featured in the March April 1985 issue of SignCraft.