I worked at the University of Wisconsin Lifesaving Station on Lake Mendota in Madison for 25 summers driving a rescue boat. There was a vintage sign hanging in the boathouse from the early 1900’s, pre-radio days. I redrew this the best I could today in Illustrator and engraved the recreation on a piece of Owyn’s walnut. Fonts are not perfect to the original, but as close as I could get them. This one will go in my personal collection, but I’ll make a few more for the guys who worked there for 40+ years. Just think, before cell phones, and radios, people used horns to communicate.
It’s a tough job recreating something that was hand lettered without drawing every letter and their individual quirks. Considering you’ve used modern uniform type, it’s a lovely sign and I’m sure the recipients will be very grateful, I know I would.
I did move and edit every single letter to shadow the original, so it’s not quite uniform, even though I used a few fonts to try and replicate the look and feel. I had to edit a few of the letters to look more like the original, but could have spent hours on that alone. I kept the spelling errors and grammatical nuances the same. Now, if I could just get snapmarks or the unicorn pass through software update, I could make a bigger one!
