INDIANAPOLIS — All signs point to a busy summer in Indianapolis as the city transitions from a jam-packed month of May straight into the USA Olympic Swimming Trials this June.
This week, Indianapolis Department of Public Works crews were busy installing dozens of street signs with the names of the country’s top swimmers.
But how are these signs made?
13News got an exclusive behind-the-scenes look inside Indy DPW’s sign shop.
The shop is tucked away behind an old steel door at DPW’s warehouse on the south side.
“It’s like Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory for the creative. If you are really creative, you like working with your hands and with your mind, this is the shop, and this is the department to do it,” said Jerry Woods, superintendent of signs and marketing for Indy DPW.
PHOTOS: Inside look at how your street signs are made
Woods just started in his role about a year ago. Before that, he was the guy installing thousands of street signs around Indy.
“It’s been one crazy year — every event, every scenario has been thrown at me,” Woods said.
Woods is no stranger to the shop. His stepfather worked as a design tech back in the 1980s.
“If you saw 8-year-old me and asked where this would go? I would have never thought a printer would be taking care of so much or even three people could do so much in such a short period of time,” Woods said.
If you see a sign downtown, there’s a good chance it was designed, manufactured and installed by this team.
“Ninety-nine percent of the signs that you pass by or that you see, we’ve touched,” Woods said. “From a specialty sign in Lockerbie to a street name sign to an event sign like the NCAA Final Four.”
The process starts by picking out the right shape of metal for the sign.
The design is then sent to a giant printer that produces a sticker-like material. Some designs are quicker than others.
“It all depends on the image I am going off. If it is a super detailed image, it could take a couple of days to get it just right. A simple street sign could take me an hour,” said David Kemp, a design tech for Indy DPW.
The sticker is then peeled off, pressed onto the metal and cut into the right shape.
The team also uses silk screens for some of the signs, with rows and rows of templates.
Last year, the team of 17 people made and installed about 14,000 signs around Indianapolis.
“We are kind of like Santa Claus in a sense. The sign is down today, and we install it overnight or when you are away at work,” Woods said.
Each sign also must follow strict federal guidelines coming from an 895-page-long traffic control device manual.
“Most people think it’s just a street sign. How difficult could it be? Well, there is an actual font for that. Those letters based on the size of the sign have to be this tall and this wide. The border around the sign has to be this wide,” Woods said.
The shop is also a treasure trove of Indy history with signs dating back decades.
We found a yellow stop sign from the 1940s, several old Indianapolis Mayor signs, a Reggie Miller sign, Final Four, Indy 500 drivers, payphone signs and “Home of Super Bowl XLVI.”
Woods said his favorite is a sign they made back in 2021 showing all the years Indy hosted the NCAA Men’s Final Four games.
Indy DPW said the host organizations pay for the specialty signs.
“It’s unbelievable what this very small, very talented group can do,” Woods said. “Everything we do is for safety to move someone in and out of the county.”
He said the most popular request is a stop sign with about 2,400 to 3,000 made a year. The one that needs to be replaced the most are speed limit signs.
“You know, they turn the 30 into 80,” Woods said.
From how fast you drive to where you turn — these signs guide thousands of drivers daily and give these workers quite the story.
“I found a home here,” Woods said. “This was the end game the whole time.”
Indy DPW estimates that there are roughly 250,000 street signs installed around Indianapolis.