6 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY JANUARY 2-8, 2025 www.montereycountynow.com 831 In 1981, Phil VanderKraats was the father of a young son. He started a small business in his single-car garage in Marina with one customer: He would make a sign for a photography business on Alvarado Street in Monterey. VanderKraats had no formal art training, but he was recently inspired by a friend who used sandblasting to sculpt. The Army veteran had taken high school art classes plus wood shop and metal shop, then learned tools of the trade in a foundry job for a bronze sculptor. “It’s a learn-as-you-go thing,” he says. “This is just what I like doing— it’s a journey, one that’s been great to be on.” The learn-as-you-go journey has taken him 44 years later to a company called Signs By Van, now with 12 employees. Those include the CEO who is that formerly baby son, Jeremy, who eight years ago, after a detour— including delivering pizza, firefighting, real estate—returned to the family business to take over from his father. “They were just hell bent on making cool stuff,” Jeremy says. Unafraid to go over budget, they’d just go for it. “Should we be dimensionalizing for an $800 project? No—but it’s an opportunity to knock somebody’s socks off.” That’s still what excites this team, motivated by superlatives—they go for big, they go for durable and sure, they even inlay gold. They work in wood, metal and more, but prefer high-density urethane. “There’s no better material on the planet to us—it lasts outside almost forever,” Jeremy says. In the early days, projects were low-tech. To get an idea of how a sign would work on a wall, VanderKraats would use an overhead projector. Now, designs are made digitally using Adobe Illustrator, but still require a human eye to decide what will work and how it will translate to reality. It’s less art than it is design, transforming a concept into a successful three-dimensional installation. Does it need to be mounted on a post, or will it hang from the ceiling? How will it hold up to rain? Will an image stretch if it’s wrapped on a vehicle? These are the sorts of questions that consume them. There have been a few massive technical leaps forward along the way, including a 5-foot-wide printer and a giant CNC machine for routing and other tasks “that would unlock our capability of doing anything we wanted to do,” Phil says. “It was a big, big step.” They work out of an old auction barn in Prunedale, part workshop-part office. There are recognizable signs they’ve made (Cannery Row Co., Ocean Mist Farms) and materials and tools stacked around them. (The CNC machine takes up an entire room.) A group of employees stands outside, sanding wooden letters. When clients’ marketing budgets dried up during the pandemic, Jeremy came up with the idea that got the business through. He knew they could use their equipment to design and fabricate sneeze guards; they did more than 450 for the UCSF hospital system, all custom sizes. “I said, ‘Thank you God—there couldn’t have been a better answer to my prayer.’ That saved our business,” Phil says. They are undaunted by scale, with several big projects underway. Clients include The Dunes in Marina, where the team built a 42-foot-wide steel structure mounted over the street with signage to welcome visitors, and they are working on a giant seascape mural on the wall of the cinema; they recently fabricated the signs for the new Trader Joe’s. A new side business, Old Growth Lumber Co., makes use of 130,000 board feet of giant sequoia from a fallen tree on Tule River Reservation in Porterville. They’ve done signage for California’s Great America, and are about two-thirds finished with a project to replace horses on the Santa Clara theme park’s giant carousel—each needs two clear coats, intended to help them last in the elements for at least 10 years. Those carousel horses are just one example of a theme. “Once we build something badass,” Jeremy says, “it’s there almost forever.” Signs by Van is located at 16130 Highway 156, Prunedale. 663-2663, signsbyvan.com. Signs of the Times A father-son team turns a simple idea of catchy business signs into a thriving business. By Sara Rubin Phil VanderKraats inside the converted auction barn that is now home to Signs By Van, which is also part gallery, displaying work from previous clients. About two-thirds provide their own designs that need to be transformed into durable signs. “Once we build something badass, it’s there forever.” TALES FROM THE AREA CODE NIK BLASKOVICH
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