Keith Margis has been building memorable visual experiences since the mid‑1980s, when he first stepped into the sign business in his hometown of Long Beach, California. Trained in traditional sign‑making under industry legends at Gary Harrison’s Sign Studio, he learned to combine craftsmanship, typography, and hand‑finished detail long before everything went digital.
Over the years, Keith’s work has expanded beyond signage into film and television, where he has served as a set and production designer, bringing worlds to life through practical sets, props, and visual storytelling. This crossover between commercial signage and entertainment design gives his projects a distinctive cinematic quality—bold, narrative‑driven visuals that still function flawlessly in the real world.
After relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area to start a family, Keith deepened his expertise as a sign designer and project manager at leading environmental graphics firms, helping shape everything from storefronts to large architectural installations. That experience became the foundation for Modern Sign & Design, the Oakland‑based studio he founded in 1992 to deliver custom interior and exterior signage, awnings, vehicle graphics, and branded environments for clients across Northern California.
Whether he’s designing architectural signage, building a film set, or developing a new art series, Keith approaches every project with the same goal: make something that not only works beautifully in its environment, but also tells a story people remember.
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