Makers of Tomorrow: Jaclyn Veasley

Jaclyn Veasley

Age: 29

Job: Senior Graphic Designer, National Sign Corp. (Seattle)

After work: Veasley enjoys traveling, particularly to Disney theme parks with her husband. She is also a freelance makeup artist.

Quote to know: “Knowing how a sign can be built is very helpful when you take it back to the initial branding design. Almost every company is going to need a sign.”

It can’t be that easy to alter – even in the tiniest fashion – the way a 100-year-old sign company designs its projects. Especially less than a year into the job. Yet, that’s exactly what Jaclyn Veasley has done at Seattle’s National Sign Corp. Veasley’s nominator credits her with elevating the “integrity” of National Sign’s projects and “bringing a fresh perspective” to the company’s sign design. It wasn’t very long ago that Veasley worked as a creative services manager/senior graphic designer for Bellevue, WA-based MOD Pizza – a client of National Sign – where she designed the interior and exterior of stores for the national chain, which included the design of signs, murals and art installations. Veasley’s role at National Sign centers on sign design and branding for companies, and she uses her rare experience on both sides of the sign company/client coin to her advantage. “I try to come up with creative and unique ideas that maybe the client didn’t think of,” she said. “I bring a more unique perspective to signs.”

A visual communication design major at the University of Washington, Veasley started out her professional career with product and catalog design, as well as digital marketing. “I got a feel for what sort of design interested me the most – and I liked designing physical products,” she said. Since landing at National Sign, Veasley has learned a lot about sign engineering. “We have a great engineer here who is helpful and explains how we make the signs stay on the wall, and not fall to the ground and injure someone,” Veasley said with a laugh.

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Veasley, a self-described “creative rebel,” blends her vast experience – she’s designed ceramics, logos, websites, wall signs, restaurant menus and wayfinding systems – with feasibility and an ability to process signs from a visual, marketing and branding perspective. Can her designs succeed both on the computer screen and in the real world? This balance comes in handy when Veasley is designing her favorite projects: multi-use buildings. “I love doing those because it’s a great combination of all the things I love: typography, branding and architecture,” she said. The best may be yet to come for Veasley; she’s presently working on a project for an iconic Seattle hotel, aiming to match an exterior sign package with the hotel’s rebrand.