De.signs Nanaimo was born from the mountains, the founder and owner Andy Bowen, was looking for a job that would allow him to bike, ski, be creative and work with his hands. Making a few signs for a ski hill in the Canadian Rockies was all it took. Andy, who now has over 20 years experience in the sign industry and over 28 as a graphic designer took to signs right away. He enjoyed working for many sign shops in BC and Alberta learning the skills along the way that would enable him to open his own shop here in Nanaimo.
Art and design were a big part of Andy’s education, in high school and college. Studying both illustration and design in high school and college, painting sets for school plays and athletic murals in the gym, were the roots in his interest in signs and large format graphics.
Example of one of the thousands of souvenir signs made while working at a resort in the Rockies
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Andy made all of the course and course map signage for the Canmore Nordic Centre disc golf course.
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Snowmobile trailer for a dealer in Revelstoke.
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He spent years making all of the signs, banners, vehicle graphics, and more for over eight ski resorts in the Canadian Rockies, including Lake Louise, Sunshine Village and Fernie. This required many on hill ski trips to check out broken signage, not fun at all….really. He also learned the art of gilding carved and sandblasted signs, while working for a well known sign shop in Banff.
Employed at several sign shops in Nanaimo Andy learned all about large format digital printing, with experience on many sizes and types of large format printers and laminators. Andy has designed and installed many of the vehicle wraps seen around Nanaimo today. While working for a major design firm in Nanaimo, Andy honed his skills as a designer, handling full magazine design, real estate branding, business cards, logos, large and small print runs.
We now handle design and installation for national firms as you can see on our installations page, we do work large and small but have a particular affection for vehicle graphics!