From Learning from Las Vegas, MIT Press, 1972, 1977, 1997, page 80, Studio Notes, Las Vegas Signs (figs. 62-68):
The time has arrived for a scholar to write a doctoral dissertation on signs. He or she would need literary as well as artistic acumen, because the same reaon that makes signs Pop Art (the need for high-speed communication with maximum meaning) makes them Pop literatrue as well. For example, this one from Philadelphia:
O. R. Lumpkin, Bodybuilders. Fenders Straightened. Wrecks our Specialty. We take the Dent out of Accident
We shall be analyzing and categorizing the signs of Las Vegas by content and form, by function (night and day) and location, as well as by size, color structure, and method of construction, trying to understand what makes the "Las Vegas style" in signs and what we can learn from them about an impure architecture of form and suymbols.
A stylistic analysis of Las Vegas signs would trace the influence of the greats (the designers in YESCO) through to the minor architecture of wedding chapels and sauna baths, compare the national and general sign imagery of the gasoline stations with the unique and specific symbolic imagery of the casinos, and follow the influence patterns back and forth between artists and sign makers. I would trace parallels with historical architecture that emphasizes association and symbolisim, such as Romanticism, eclecticism, Mannerism, and the iconographic aspects of Gothic architecture, and tie these into the sign styles of Las Vegas.
In the seventeenth centurey, Rubens created a painting "factory" wherein different workers specialized in drapery, foliage, or nudes. In Las Vegas there is just such a sign "factory," the Young Electric Sign Company. Someone should talk to and observe and document each of the departments in YESCO; find out the backgrounds of the designers; watch the whole design process.
Is there a private vocabulary for sign designers such as that existing in architecture? How is the contradiction between form and function resolved in sign design? Carefully photograph the sign models.
So, that was thirty-six years ago. I must find out what's been done since—or do it myself, with a world of signage and instant communication that's far more sophisticated now. (It's also a world without the much-discussed sign for The Dunes hotel, which I captured in 1983.
Yesco is still around, and offers comprehensive services, including design. Many of YESCO's signs have become icons. You've gotta love a company that shows an historic sign from Bountiful, Utah.
http://www.yesco.com
http://www.yesco.com/138.html
