Mark C. Childs is the associate dean for research and a professor of architecture at the University of New Mexico. He is also the author of Squares: A Public Place Design Guide for Urbanists (UNM Press) and the coauthor of the award-winning The Zeon Files: Art and Design of Historic Route 66 Signs (UNM Press).

Ellen D. Babcock is an associate professor of sculpture at the University of New Mexico. She has exhibited at numerous New Mexico and California venues, including the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe and the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery and the Southern Exposure Gallery in San Francisco. She founded Friends of the Orphan Signs (FOS), an organization that sites collaboratively produced public art in abandoned signage.