Stokes Sign Company is celebrating 30 years of serving Lakeway residents and businesses, providing made-to-order signage for small businesses, churches, city departments, and schools.

Meet the team

Opened in 1994, with a second location opened in Westlake in 1999, the business was founded by artist Nancy Stokes Hearn, a former technical illustrator who designed instructional manuals for McDonnell Douglas.

Throughout her early career, Hearn slowly pieced together what her true passion was. Coming from a family-owned small business and being the grandchild of an artist, all of the pieces of the puzzle were put together for Hearn when she began making signs and selling them.

“I was kind of born to be a sign maker. I love making signs. I still get excited coming to work every day,” Hearn said.

Keeping the passion for art alive through the generations, Stokes employs many young artists and recent graduates, and Hearn says that the company celebrates their staff’s creativity.

“The core of our business is the art of it,” Hearn said. “The hardest thing is getting young people out of college and it’s like, okay we’re artists but we’re artists for someone else for right now, right?”

Stokes’ policy is to provide a “second option” to clients for each project. In doing so, the company is able to satisfy client requests first and foremost while also giving staff an opportunity to provide their artistic input and ideas.

“We’re trying to get them what they want it to look like. So we always offer what we call our second option. Somebody gives us something, they have a real strict idea of what they want, and we go ahead and add our second option—and sometimes they choose it.”

What they offer

Stokes has worked with countless clients in Lakeway and surrounding areas. Notably, the company designed the city logo for Lakeway, which appears on city signage throughout the area.

Examples of other projects include wraps for restaurants and food trucks like Lefty’s Pizza, wayfinding signs for Rough Hollow, and channel lettering for Westlake Dermatology.

As far as which projects the team enjoys most, Hearn explained that every employee’s interest differs—her favorite is handmade painted signs, whereas co-owner Aaron Adams particularly enjoys producing vehicle wraps and reception signage.

What makes Stokes unique, more than anything, is their staff, Hearn and Adams said, as well as the wide variety of work that they are capable of producing in-house. Their shop is equipped to produce posters, reception area signs, vehicle wraps, window graphics, and banners, among many other products.

Hearn also added that the company continues to invest in new technology, including state of the art large format printers, laser engravers, and digital cutters.

“Signs that used to take us a week, now can be made in a day. Our printers produce vibrant, high resolution colors and images that will hold up for years in the Texas sun. We print on larger materials and cut down to any shape or size allowing us to give our clients competitively priced signs, quickly," Hearn said.

Why it matters

Both Hearn and co-owner Adams said they celebrate the mutually beneficial relationship between their business and the community it serves. To them, the most important part of designing a sign is getting information out on local businesses and helping them to advertise effectively.

“That’s what I like about the sign business, too. You actually are helping the community at the same time as you are growing your own business,” Hearn said. “And it isn’t a whole lot of large corporations. It’s mainly small businesses and other businesses like us.”