My name is Natalia Lubarskaya. For twenty-five years, I have been operating the advertising and production company “Sunny City” in the south of Russia. In that time, we have created tens of thousands of signs. The geography of our projects covers more than 55 cities. We decorate shopping malls for the holidays, make signs for many well-known brands, and design store facades. We know this process from sketch to installation.

But the longer I am in this business, the more clearly, I see: a sign isn’t just advertising. It’s a message, a conversation with customers and with ordinary passersby. It’s the memory of a city. That’s why signs matter so much. When we started our business in the early 2000s, no one thought of signs as art. It was just an advertising structure: an order, a drawing, installation, and on to the next order. For the most part, I viewed signs as a craftsperson: how to make them, what materials to use, how durable they would be. Today, I see them as history.

In 2024, at the advertising manufacturers’ forum in Moscow, for the first time in our industry, projects for restoring neon signs from the Soviet era were presented. These were not archivists. Not museum staff. These were my colleagues — production workers, those who bend neon with their own hands and straighten rusty structures. I felt something strange. For twenty years we made new signs and wrote off the old ones as scrap metal. And suddenly we started talking about preserving our heritage.

From that moment, a movement began in the advertising production industry. Not just a few initiatives, but a real wave. Architectural firms joined in. It turned out they had been working for a long time on unique urban redevelopment projects for smaller Russian towns—and saw old signs as anchors for a city’s cultural code. Museums also joined this process. Some signs became museum exhibits. Charitable organizations began raising funds for restoration, as restoring neon signs requires significant resources. Some private donors also showed activity.

I realized I couldn’t stand aside. For twenty-five years I lit up new signs. Now it was time to bring light back to the old ones. I want to show you five stories. From different cities, from different times, but with one thing in common: each of these signs was supposed to disappear. And they didn’t.

After the “2024” forum, I realized that my role is not just about giving signals. I must share these stories so that they are heard beyond the boundaries of a single company, a single profession, a single city, or a single country.

This is how the “Signs of Time” project was born. I collect stories about signs from all over the country and write about them. I show artisans, architects, museums, and ordinary residents that these are not just scrap metal. That they are letters from the past, delivered to the city every evening when the lights come on.

I know that in America, neon has a life of its own. There are legendary signs, your own artisans, and an annual festival of light that brings people together. I wrote a book about the light we are losing. And that brought me here. We do similar work, just in a different language and in different cities. But the light unites us all, even across the ocean. It burns so brightly that the city remembers itself.