Welcome to the Neon Speaks Online Book Fair!
Each year we curate a special list of books for the Neon Speaks Festival and feature a festival T-shirt. Browse the books below and celebrate the connective power of vintage signs and popular culture.

FOLLOW THE SIGNS:
DEAN BLAZEK’S 70-YEAR SIGN JOURNEY

Dean Blazek hold the world record for the longest continuous neon career. He says he dreams about signs every night. Now his long and entertaining career is captured in a book by his son Michael, his family, and many of the glassbenders who learned and lived the neon craft with Dean at his Wisconsin neon school
Author: Michael Blazek

ABOUT THIS BOOK
Softcover book, 118 pages, with 120+ color photographs. Interviews with Dean Blazek, family, and many of the neon students that Dean inspired.

SAVING NEON:
A BEST PRACTICES GUIDE

Release Date: November 2018, Giant Orange Press
Authors: Al Barna and Randall Ann Homan
Soft cover, 40 pages, full color

Is there a neon sign in your neighborhood edging toward oblivion? This guidebook gives you the information you need to kick into conservation mode to “save the sign” using neon best practices. Includes resource links and organizations to contact for support. There is a growing national movement to protect neon neighborhood icons threatened by neglect, refacing, or removal.

Funding for the Neon Speaks Symposium and this guidebook made possible by a San Francisco Heritage Alice Ross Carey grant and a matching grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

NEON: A LIGHT HISTORY

Release Date: March 2021, Giant Orange Press
Authors: Dydia DeLyser and Paul Greenstein
Soft cover, 90 pages, full color, 8.5 x 11 trim size

About this book:
Is it possible that (once again) everything we know is wrong? Well, in regards to the history of neon, this may well be the case. Dydia DeLyser and Paul Greenstein have penned a brief, but concise history of the neon sign beginning at the beginning, and covering scandals, murder, fascists, and forgotten inventors. A full-color, lavishly illustrated electrical bodice ripper, aficionados of neon will find this an indispensable “bible” to the history of their favorite collision of art and commerce.

NEON ICONS

Exhibition Catalog for San Francisco Neon Survivors and Icons from the Archives
Release Date: November 2015, Giant Orange Press
Authors: Al Barna and Randall Ann Homan
Soft cover, 40 pages, full color

A local favorite, this is a catalog of an exhibition at the San Francisco Public Library Main Branch in 2015. The current day photographs and historic images in this catalog exemplify the rich history of commercial neon signage that once graced the commercial corridors of San Francisco. The majority of the iconic images were culled from the photo archive in San Francisco Public Library’s San Francisco History Center. We are fortunate that these photo archives exist, they preserve a historic perspective on the evolution of the city we call home.