By John Hayes
Posted on Monday, February 10th, 2025
Eleven years ago I was let go from a printing/publishing company here in Kansas City where I’d served as art director and production coordinator. I immediately found a job with a silk-screening and emblem manufacturing company as a production artist, but because the company was hurting financially, it only lasted a few months. Not wanting to stay on unemployment, I took a job with a supermarket as a checker and decided to supplement this with freelance graphic-art jobs.
I was soon making quick point-of-purchase signs for the store. The store used large markers that were stored in canisters with felt and ink at the bottom. I got good at using them. The freelance graphic business on the side hung in there, but selling an occasional $35 cartoon or designing a T-shirt for a run of four dozen was hardly an incentive to walk away from a steady, forty-hour-a-week job with nice benefits.
One day the store manager told me that he would like the front windows painted for the upcoming Thanksgiving and Christmas season—something I had never done before. I went to the arts and crafts store and bought little bottles of craft paint and small brushes. My first window was cute and well received, but it took me all week to get it done. It was all cartoon work—no lettering. Looking back at the nine-year-old photos makes me cringe, but at the time I was very proud of it.
Learning splash layout After a couple more window projects, I painted some windows at other store locations. I wanted to become better and faster, like the window-splash artist who blows into town, masterfully creates splashes for all his assigned stores, collects his money and then drives off to the next town. His colors are always clean, bright and vivid, and his lettering astounded me. I would study his work intently—and still do. Even though I’ve never met him, I know his work well.
After much study and research on materials, along with more and more practice, my window splashes have gotten much better. Studying other splash-artist’s work has been invaluable, and SignCraft magazine
and the Letterhead website have been excellent resources—sign makers on the site have been eager to volunteer information whenever I run into a problem and need pointers.
There’s also Nick Barber’s book, How to Paint Watercolor Window Splashes, which I’ve read about 10,000 times. (Published by SignCraft but now out of print.) I also examine product packaging, greeting cards and magazine covers. Design ideas can come from anywhere.
The best teacher, though, has been practice. I’ve been lucky to learn on the job and even more fortunate that it has grown into such a gratifying sideline. At first I was trying to be like the traveling pros, but lately I’ve been breaking away from their styles.
Through trial and error, and a fair share of frustration, I came to the conclusion that honing my own strengths has yielded better windows. I use a more contemporary “casual” style and favor large, flat shapes with thick outlines when rendering my cartoons. I use very little shading and highlighting, going for a more “graphic” approach. As long as the message gets across to the customer and the client is happy with the approach, there are no set rules.
Naturally, you want eye-popping readability with bold prices and headlines above all else, but the different possibilities of delivering the same message are endless. My camera has become my best marketing tool. I take pictures of my better grocery jobs and send them out along with a business card to potential customers. In the past several months alone, I’ve done work for McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and Chili’s restaurants.
Do them on Tyvek! Winters in Kansas are cold. After reading the profile on Pierre Tardif in the November/December 2001 issue of SignCraft, I have set up shop in my basement and am creating window splashes on Dupont Tyvek. My first attempt was for a Ford dealership. Their website had to be spelled out across the front of the building—one letter in each of the sixteen windowpanes.
I did the layout on my Macintosh. Using an overhead projector, I was able to produce the panels in the comfort of my warm, cozy basement. Some may say that a drawback to Tyvek is the white paper backing that faces the customers on the inside, but I like the glow it gives the lettering.
I never expect to give up the actual glass painting altogether. My favorite jobs have been for the local Chili’s restaurants. I do bar mirrors, glass entryways and have a blast with their southwestern “Salsa” motif. I make my cartoon characters outlandish and mix up really odd color combinations out of the back of my truck. These are my dream jobs—I get crazier with each one I do.
Still a sideline Juggling my window job around my day job is sometimes difficult, but so far I’ve been able to do it. I enjoy the people I’ve met through the years, and the grocery store I work for has been good to me. Staying put only makes sense.
I’ll never retire completely. There will be more windows I will want to paint, and the prospect of climbing ladders at age 65 doesn’t scare me in the least. I’m hoping that by then I will have matured into a seasoned pro. My goal with each new assignment is to create a better window job than the one before it and to improve my skills as I go. There is nothing more gratifying than being able to step back from an especially successful project and say, “I did that!”
John Hayes and Darby, his wife, live in Lenexa, Kansas.
This article appeared in the March/April 2003 issue of SignCraft.
