ALTON – The spirit of #OurAlton has been incarnated into large sheet-metal letters on East Broadway right now, thanks to Winona, Minnesota-based YourType.
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YourType owner Todd Hoffman said he has been in the business of large lettering for the past nine months, after being in the sign-making business since the late 1980s. He said he started his own sign business in 1996, and the large lettering occurred as a sort of experiment. Hoffman said it got its start when Minneapolis hosted the Super Bowl as well as demands for large letters in weddings.
Large, sheet-metal letters are both tall and durable, Hoffman said. The ones in Alton are in town through the Oct. 4 viewing party of Alton's season (season three) of Deluxe Corporation's “Small Business Revolution.” Hoffman said he wanted to lend the city the letters with no strings attached to help market his own small business through the show. He also said show host, Amanda Brinkman, has a connection to his own small town.
“I was watching 'The Small Business Revolution' on Hulu, and I discovered Amanda from the show actually studied at Winona State University, so I reached out to her as a small business in a small town,” he said. “We've done a lot of work for CVBs (convention and visitors bureaus), so I thought it would be a good tie-in for 'The Small Business Revolution.' It's because I myself run a small business, and it is a good chance to self-promote.”
Those letters are built in-house at YourType through a system of hardware and software, which Hoffman said included a lot of moving parts. He has one other employee besides himself and drove eight hours to deliver the letters to Alton himself.
They will be on display at the Alton Main Street Thursday Night Market this evening as the crew of “The Small Business Revolution” returns to film one last time. The Night Market takes place in the pocket park between the Jacoby Art Center and Germania as well as inside of Jacoby.
