Joe Jarreau: From machine shop to sign shop

By signcraft

Posted on Monday, September 8th, 2025

In high school, Joe Jarreau worked at a local newspaper doing flyer layouts. Art class was a breeze. He loved drawing and was a sketch artist and cartoonist. After high school, though, he worked in a machine shop, got married, then landed a job at a car dealership as a mechanic. It was that job that led to what became a career in the sign business in Southern California. Here’s what he told SignCraft about that 45-year ride:

Discovering sign painting: A pinstriper, Gary Hetrick, used to come to the dealership to stripe the higher-end cars. He was a very good artist and did some lettering, too. We got to be friends and I decided I wanted to be a sign painter. I started doing a few signs on the side, then one day I decided to make the switch.

All I had behind me was a one-semester lettering class at a junior college that I had taken years before just for fun and the Speedball Textbook. I built an easel in our home and started picking up a few jobs. I took out an ad in the phone book, and things really picked up. I was about 29 years old.

From there I started sharing shop space with a sign maker who did a lot of architectural letters and sandblasted signs. After a few years, I rented a four-car garage for my own shop in the Signal Hill area, about an hour from our home. That was in the mid-eighties.

Sharing his shop space: The business there was good, and I remember working a lot of late nights. It turned out that the late Jon Harl [first featured in the January/February 1992 issue of SignCraft] lived just a few blocks away. He stopped by and introduced himself, telling me that he painted paper grocery banners from a shop in his garage and wanted to shift to commercial sign work. I asked if he’d like to share shop space. It worked for him and helped me with my overhead.

We worked together for a couple of years and had a good relationship. It was good for me because he was trained by Richard Ernest at LA Trade Tech and had worked in a very busy shop after that. Being self-taught, it was an opportunity for me to get a perspective on the business that I didn’t have.

We bounced ideas off each other, which worked great. He wasn’t there long before he suggested we host a Mike Stevens workshop. That seemed like a good idea, and he knew quite a few area sign people. We ended up hosting two of Mike’s workshops. It was great experience.

Around that same time, I got my state sign contractor’s license. I was able to spread my wings and bid on larger jobs, moving away from doing just hand lettered work. General contractors, architects, property managers and city governments began contacting me. Most of these jobs required city approval and obtaining sign permits, which couldn’t be done without a state sign contractor’s license.

I developed relationships with a few electrical signs shops and subcontracted the electrical sign work instead of turning it down. When masonry work was needed for monument signs, I subcontracted that, too.

Moving closer to home: After a couple of years, Jon got a shop of his own. I eventually got tired of the hour’s drive to the shop and rented a spot in an industrial complex in Fullerton. I was there for about ten years, until 2004.

I wasn’t doing much sign painting by that point. It was mostly fabricated signs and letters that I ordered from wholesalers then installed. When an electrical sign shop offered me a job designing and selling electric signs, with the space to do my own jobs, I took it. I did that for about ten years.

Eventually my business grew and I decided to focus on my own customers. I revamped the garage at our Chino Hills home as my workspace and have worked from here ever since. So here I am—back to working from home.

Changes in the business: I haven’t done much hand lettering for the past 15 or 20 years. Computers and vinyl changed all that in the late 1980s. Calls for painted signs were becoming fewer. I continued sign painting windows, trucks, banners, overlaid plywood signs and wall work, but other types of sign work were taking me more and more away from brush work. I was doing dimensional letters, sandblasted signs, even electrical signage on occasion.

I developed some good accounts, including the Honda Center in Anaheim, a large arena where the Anaheim Ducks hockey team plays and where they have concerts and other events. I still do a lot of work there.

At 75, I’m not totally retired yet. For the past ten years, I stay busy just taking care of my long-time customers. Since 2011, I’ve been battling aggressive prostate cancer. I’m a 14-year survivor.

I do dimensional letter signs for the private suites that companies have at the Honda Center, and I just finished doing a 60-truck fleet for an electrical contractor. I did about eight per week at the dealer as the trucks arrived. It took me three months. It worked out well but it was a grind for me.

When I look back through the photos of work that I’ve done over the years, it surprised me what I took on. In my forties I would tackle just about anything. If I thought I could do it, I took it. It kept things interesting, but I know I wouldn’t attempt some of those jobs today.

Painting again: I’ve got a painted sign coming up soon, though, for a friend who restored a dragster from the 1960s. He takes it to shows and needs a display sign. I’m going to have a little fun with it and do some gold leaf lettering. I’ll stay with the original lettering of the car, although I couldn’t resist tightening up the spacing and tweaking the lettering.

I think I was fortunate in that I could always recognize a good sign from a bad one. That’s really how I learned layout and design. When I saw someone whose work I liked—usually in the sign magazines—I tried to tell what it was that made it so effective. I did layouts based on those layouts and that’s how I learned. Mike Stevens and his Mastering Layout book were a big inspiration. There was a lot of information there on what makes a sign layout work.

Over the years, I got to know Doc Guthrie, who taught the sign graphics program at LA Trade Tech College, and went there several times to share what I know with his students. He often got me, Patrick Smith, Jon Harl and others to do that. There are some very talented people in that program.

Hand lettering is a rarity around my area these days. I’m always watching for good-looking signs, though, and it’s great to come across a hand-painted sign.

Sign work is fun, and that’s what kept me doing it all these years. The business changed a lot over that time, but it was still fun. That’s what counts.