KINGSTON — The Corey Sign and Display Company Inc. has been around the block quite a few times during its stretch in Western Washington.

On Feb. 3, 1903, J.C. Corey opened the J.C. Corey Sign Company on First and Madison in Seattle behind a fruit stand. It moved to Fifth Avenue, Pine Street, and then East Pike until the business relocated across the Sound to Minder Road in Kingston in 1997.

Three generations of owners and five generations of employees later, J.C.’s business is still running strong after 100 years.

During his time in Seattle, J.C. and company primarily painted the city’s theatre fronts such as the Paramount Theatre and The Coliseum Theatre.

Signs then were completed in an art that is almost nonexistent today — handlettering. These carefully crafted works were only displayed for weeks at a time before being replaced with new hand-crafted signs. Eventually, the industry upgraded with vinyl lettering, screen printing and computer designs.

Now, J.C.’s grandsons, Cam and Scott, do primarily graphic design and screen printing, with the occasional handlettering in their garage-like suite at Kennedy Industrial Park.

The brothers took over the business in 1984, but were practically born with a paintbrush in hand as they helped their father Bob Corey with the business long before they could drive.

When the duo went to college, they didn’t intend on taking on the family enterprise, Scott said, noting that it took one summer working for their dad before they decided to carry on the paintbrush and cardboard tradition.

However, as the Coreys have discovered during their nearly 20-year ownership, it’s an industry that isn’t as specialized as it used to be.

“The sign industry is dying,” Cam explained, noting years ago, handlettering could take as long as several days. Now, work can be completed within a few hours with the click of a mouse and the speed of a gigabyte hard drive.

“The industry has changed a lot,” Cam added. “We’ve kind of targeted our business (to those changes).”

The business is almost like desktop publishing, Scott said.

“It used to be who had the fastest sign painters made the most business,” Cam commented. “Now it’s who has the fastest (computer) hardware.”

While sign businesses in the 1950s could employ up to 20 employees, today it’s just Scott, Cam and several part-time workers producing images, posters and displays.

The business prints everything from directional signs for art studio tours to vinyl banners and real estate posters — primarily designed on the computer.

Ironically, the business often creates reproductions of images from the industry’s heyday in the 1930s, Scott said, referring to reproduced posters for national parks promoting sites such as the Grand Canyon and Mount Rainier.

Some of the bigger jobs in the past include Seattle’s 1962 World’s Fair and work for major department stores in downtown Seattle.

The company’s biggest account today is Pacific NW Apparel Association, which has been a client for 64 years. Corey Signs still creates products for the organization’s fashion shows in Seattle, although it’s vastly different than when Bob and J.C. were running the business.

“They cheat, they do it all on a computer,” Bob said with a chuckle. “I used to handletter them.”

The biggest sign the company ever created was a 40-foot by 60-foot creation that took four weeks to complete. Today, Cam and Scott can print up vinyl lettering for 30-foot banner in an hour.

Even so, the future of the company is unclear as Cam and Scott plan retire in about 15 years and aren’t exactly encouraging the next generation of Coreys to get involved.

“It’s been a good business but there is not a big future for the sign business,” Cam said.

In the 1970s, the company was doing the work for JC Pennys, Nordstroms and Sears. But within the past 15 years, those department stores had their own graphic design departments, cutting the need for contract work. In 1984, when the third generation took over the business, desktop publishing was already changing, Scott said.

“Now the people who can actually handletter signs are very few,” he explained.

But the company has found one aspect of its business that is primarily hands-on work — sandblasting lettering and signs onto rock.

“The one thing you can’t do on a computer,” Cam said with a laugh.