If you would like to see some video footage of  Traditional Signwriting, please take a look at this film made by Adam King as part of his University work https://vimeo.com/41291884 called The Sign Writer, hopefully this will soon be linked to the main website.

This past month has seen various projects connected to the Diamond Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Along with local village activities whereby they will be celebrating at the Bramley Village Fete on 26th May selling commemorative souvenirs designed by local youngsters and with Bramfest 2012 an outdoor Music Festival at Gosden House School.  The music will be taking place in the Garden of Dreams and I was interested to see a photograph on their website of some signwriting that I did there. www.bramfest.co.uk

I have painted various sections of text and quotations onto the (mainly white rendered) walls and these have often been linked to Shakespearean themes because of the link between The Globe Theatre in London and Gosden House School. All of the pupils join in productions which move around to various parts of the site as the performance continues scene by scene, I believe the dress rehersal for A Midsummer Night’s Dream was taking place with hoards of costumed youngsters streaming by. This must have been 2007 as we also provided the plaque on the left hand side marking the diamond jubilee of Gosden House School. Inside the buildings the pupils have an interesting display about the history of the buildings and I have found a link to it here  www.gosden-house.surrey.sch.uk/pdfs/history200.pdf

Other parts of the building have links with former productions.

Painted Lettering for Hamlet

Sonnet painted onto the wall in the courtyard

Distressed Union Jack to BMW

 

Richmond Park Gates

 

We have also been privileged recently to add text and graphics to the refurbished library at Wellington College.

 

Text to Curved Glass and doors

 

We took the theme of the curved glass and used metallic charcoal along with the etched effect to give contrast against the clear glass.

 

We mentioned aeroplane nose art previously. Here is a picture of the Italian First World War fighter pilot Francessco Barracca which aertoons.com feature in their history of aviation “nose art”. It was the black prancing horse on the yellow background which Enzo Ferrari decided would fit perfectly with his concept of thoroughbred sporting motor cars.

Baracca Nose Art

People have always personalised planes and cars, motorbike and HotRod enthusiasts favour lining and striping which was common on much earlier modes of transports, coaches and horse drawn buggies. Although coachlining on production cars is very limited these days we are sometimes called upon to recreate the effects particularly on Bentleys and Rolls Royces. These often have a bit of lining on the wheels, the contemporary version of cart wheels. The lining on this horsedrawn milkfloat was already there, I was drafted in to add the signwritten lettering and supply the wooden header board in the style of the original Caterham cart of the photograph.

Horse Drawn Milk Float

Traditional Signwriting on Milk Float

Sigwriting to rear of cart

 

Wooden Header Board

 

I copied the sides quite faithfully, but not having a photograph of the rear enabled me to swing the strokes to fit the space. The old fashioned milk bottles were copied from old posters, you got cream on the top in those days and the bottles were a different shape.We have an old milk churn in the garden which we have painted blue and added a bit of lettering to. Don Bailey collected lots of milk churns to give his 1960′s milk lorry an original feel.

 We have been working on quite a few horseboxes recently. All vinyl work on these nowadays. Four Quarters Polo Transporter a few weeks back.

Four Quarters Polo Pony Transporter at JMB Horsepower

    

Thrower Signs QR code

Adding colour and design elements can make your QR code stand out from the crowd.

This is our own new bespoke QR code:

We can now help you to get a QR code made to order in your own style and colours, possibly including your logo.

Compare this with a more standard QR code which one of our customers will shortly be adding to their vehicles:

Wandsworth Group QR link to website.

Combinations can be made using the more familiar grid format, adding colours, curves and shadow effects.

Call 01483 894257, 01344 772164 or email simon@throwersigns.co.uk for more information.

It is always good when form and function combine aesthetically. A good example of this was the nosecone of the Eagle Formula One team in the 1960′s.

Eagle Formula One Racing Nosecone

Whilst from the front it did not look too immediately different from the Lotus with it’s oval duct, from the side it beautifully alluded to the American Eagle of the team name.

Anglo American Eagle Racing Car

We all take inspiration from earlier design and form. Looking at the Scarlet Lady on the previous entry inspired me to look at some of the wartime cockpit art. The most similar I found was “Heavenly Body”. Although this might not be original as the plane has been used for films.

Many of the pictures used were taken from movie posters or the “lad’s mags” of the day and you can see many of these featured on sites such as www.squidoo.com/Airplane-pinup.    There is another similar image “Sugarland Bess” from Military Images.net

Wartime Bomber "Sugarland Bess"

Wartime Bomber "Heavenly Body"

 Although many were copies of existing images, one advertising man, Phil Brinkman was flown over to the UK specifically to paint designs, some of his most famous are known as Zodiacs and there is a fascinating compilation of pictures (including some of his original sketches) at www.486th.org/Photos/AC1/Zodiac1.htm

Returning to G.F. Watt’s Hope

G.F. Watts "Hope"

Obama as “Hope”

Obama Campaign poster with "Hope" in Gotham

Mix in some Street Art influence from David Choe.

David Choe's version of Obama "Hope"

 Choe has been in the news this week. Apparently he did some work on the walls of the Facebook offices and took shares in lieu of payment. The float should ensure that he gets a $200m payout for two days work.

We may appreciate the skills of Urban Artists such as Choe and Banksy without condoning possibly law breaking activities.

Some people who have broken the law are set to work making signs, both in the UK and in the USA. It was reported in Vermont recently that prisoners from the correctional units who make the decals for the Police vehicles had sneaked a pig shape into the dappled hide of cows in the crest on the State cruisers.

Police Decal Vermont

 Close up of the pig-shaped spot.

Close up of decal

 Also in the news recently, School should be cool, but Shcool is not cool when it is written large on the streets of Manhattan.  See http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/crew-mistakenly-spells-shcool-ng-15429708

Traditional Signwriting, Simon the signwriter

Tumbleweed Connection Enamel Sign

Being a traditional signwriter and interested in graphics of all kinds I enjoy looking at old signs, especially enamel advertising signs which you may find displayed at places like the Bluebell Railway (and these are also reproduced on the cover of the album by Eton John entitled  Tumbleweed Connection). See www.flickr.com/photos/31514768@N05/4398255131/ for a particularly relevent example. I also own a projecting version of a similar double sided design for Blue Bell Tobacco.  Good examples of enamel signs can also be seen at motor museums such as Beaulieu www.beaulieu.co.uk and the Cotswolds Motor Museum in Bourton-on-the-Water www.csmaclubretreats.co.uk/museum/index.php

Album covers involving hand lettering would also include the Mannfred Mann     abum Semi-detached Suburban and of course the drum created for The Beatles Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Another signwriter Eddie Stokes had some years earlier painted the skin of Ringo Starr’s drum in 1963. www.beatlesbible.com/features/drop-t-logo/ Of course in most of these cases the artists remain largely anonymous and probably quite poorly paid. The drum shop were apparently paid £5 for the sketch which became the logo, I doubt that Eddie or Joe were paid more than their usual hourly rate at the time.

If we go back to the start for our final influence and link to both railways, signwriting, records and global branding we should look at Ken White. Ken is known for his murals, but you can find a painting of his online called “Signwriters”, which is a recollection of his early life working on the Great Western Railway at Swindon and has recently been displayed at STEAM museum www.swindonweb.com/?m=2&s=625&ss=626&c=4523. Ken started as a rivetter and later worked as a signwriter, his murals attracted the attention of Richard Branson and among other items he painted the Scarlet Lady, presumably influenced by 1940′s American Calenders and the artworks that appeared particularly on US wartime bombers.   

     I was interested to note that Lady Penelope has the registration ending FAB, something which I am sure every plane spotter in the world would know instantly.

A happy new year to everyone reading this blog. The start of a new year is exciting as we don’t know what interesting jobs are ahead of us, but it also gives us a chance to review some of the fascinating projects that we have been involved with this year and to share some of the things we have learnt. The village of Compton lies just a few miles down the road from us and is the home to Watts Gallery www.wattsgallery.org.uk where G.F. Watts (sometimes referred to as the English Michelangelo) and his wife Mary Seton Watts, (the Arts and Crafts movement potter), lived and set up their studios and gallery. The gallery had been sadly neglected over the years and the large collection of Watts paintings and sculpture patterns were in danger of being damaged or lost until being featured on the BBC Restoration Village in 2006, although not winning,the ensuing publicity gave greater knowlege to the general public of the Hope fund which had been launched by the Trustees and staunch supporters. Over £11m was raised to restore and protect the building including donations from the Heritage Lottery Fund as well as other major benefactors.

Watts Gallery, Compton

Whilst it was a privilege to be involved with the supply of signs to the site both during the refurbishment and on completion and re-opening of the gallery, working with some graphics supplied by www.peper-design.co.uk

 it was also fascinating to learn more about both G. F. Watts and his wife Mary Watts. This sometimes takes me off at a tangent. Typing “Hope”- the name of the appeal fund, into Google you will find not only G.F. Watt’s 1886 painting of the same name and cartoons and parodies that it inspired, but also links to President Obama and his Electoral Campaign “Audacity of Hope”, Nelson Mandella and his cell in Robben Island and Picasso’s “The Old Guitarist”. The Obama connection then takes me to the Election Poster “Hope” and the font used there, Hoefler and Frere-Jones  ”Gotham”, which is now used globally and seems particularly popular at present for TV stations.  www.typography.com/fonts/font_overview.php?productLineID=100008

This link also takes me away from the paintings of G.F. Watts via the Watts Cemetary Chapel (desribed by Lucinda Lambton as “one of the most extraordinary, original marvellous and magical buildings in the whole British Isles”)  www.wattsgallery.org.uk/watts-chapel

to Postman’s Park in London. Where the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice instigated by George Frederick and Mary Watts stands. Close to St. Paul’s cathedral you can see this tiled wall commemorating ordinary people who died saving others.

Memorial Tile, London

Postman's Park TileCeramic Tile, Green and White

The style of these ceramic tiles are recreated in the Learning Centre at the rebuilt Gallery and some are featured on the walls, especially close to to model for one of Watts most famous sculptures, “Physical Energy”.

See our video montage http://www.throwersigns.co.uk/movie.html
It is always interesting to work on historic items such as the motorbike sidecar box and horse drawn milk float shown on my last blog and to work on classic vehicles or to recreate items from film or TV. Many years ago now I hand lettered a “Trotter” style 3 wheeler working from bits of paused video to check accuracy and for some large store windows recreated an impression of the Beverley Hills signs (using a still shot from Beverley Hills Cop), I do not believe any of these photos still exist. This Christmas it was nice to be able to take inspiration from one of the classic films to help to create a window display for our friends at Jason Charles Jewellery in Sunninghill

Cut out Window display for Christmas

We took the original movie title

It's A Wonderful Life movie original caption

And drew in the additional characters required to make suitable wording for Christmas.

 

Wonderful Christmas Sunninghill

Christmas is also the time when we most think of playing games together, so we were pleased to be able to supply a new fascia in Godalming with this theme.

The Classical Game Shop, Godalming

Images were chosen, drawn or inserted to aid the theme.

Chess & Dice

 

Playing Cards

Scrabble and Snakes & Ladders

The first version included a “Trivial Pursuit” style of script for some of the main text, but the simpler Cable font (reminiscent of Monopoly) gave greater clarity. The bottom edge was contour cut to give greater depth and a sense of fun to the panel. The panels were surface mounted, whereas the contour cut “Wonderful Christmas” display was internally suspended by the customers.

You can see my design used on the website:-

www.classicalgameshop.co.uk

 

 
See our video montage http://www.throwersigns.co.uk/movie.html

Old Wokingham Telephone Number

Our Crowthorne telephone number still includes 4 of the original digits which date back to the 1960′s. In those days all you needed to put was Crowthorne 2164 on your business card and unless they called in at the workshop, that was how people got hold of you.
At the point when operators no longer connected you by the exchange name and STD codes came in you would probably only be called by someone living within the same area who did not need to enter a code or they would look up the code number in the phone book. Some of the big trucks with overseas connections might also in those days have a Telex number painted on. Then came Facsimile, which we all called Fax. With the greater use of mobile technology and the fact that these were not routed through the area exchange from which you were calling, full Area Codes and 9 and then later 10 digits for each mobile also needed to be applied to vehicles. Greater use of the internet required web sites and e-mail addresses to become requisites. No wonder there seemed greater simplicity of layout and cleaner lines to those early vehicles.

The shortest telephone number in the West

Could this all change again towards simplicity? Quite possibly, because now along comes QR. (Quick Response code)

QR Code applied to Transit Connect

Apparently created originally by Toyota to aid logistics, these bar codes are now used in all kinds of advertising as a short cut to web pages when scanned by iPhone or similar technology with suitable apps. Interestingly the other graphics on the vehicle follow good basic rules. They say that “A picture tells a thousand words” and this is very often true, the earliest signs, from the days when much of the population were illiterate, were symbols which everyone could recognise- An anvil for the blacksmith, the pub might be Four Horseshoes, the pawnbroker- three balls.

Pawnbrokers Symbol

The logo design  on the van with the QR code incorporates a tap which immediately links to plumbing and the use of blue associates with water.

LCS Bathrooms Ltd Tansit Connect

Optician's Hanging Bracket Sign

Some of the simplest designs are the easiest to understand. The design of this hanging bracket sign for an Optician hardly requires the text to identify the business.  

Perhaps the introduction of shortcuts like these may enable a reduction of text on future vehicles, as Telex and increasingly Fax is eliminated, perhaps in the future we may not need e-mail, web address or long telephone numbers. Visibility is the the key, very often less is more.

See our video montage http://www.throwersigns.co.uk/movie.html
We all know that mistakes happen (and if they do we try to correct them immediately), probably the most common mistake in High Streets is Off License instead of Off Licence which may partly be explained by American Spell Checkers on UK computers, but how do you explain this?

Mail Van for Guildford there's lovely

I have seen this Mail van regularly in the Guildford area. Welsh language text on the rear and on one side, the usual English logo elsewhere and clearly labelled as GU86 vehicle.

Are we in Guildford?

Are we in Merthyr?

Some other common mistakes are incorrect spellings of ACCOMMODATION, PAVILION and MARSHAL. We admit to errors in names sometimes TREES instead of TRESS, MACADAM instead of Mc ADDEN and MOTH END instead of MOSS END. Sometimes people try to copy the impression of a famous logo Mc WOK or popular cartoon characters. Very rarely do you come across a deliberate fabrication. One of these can be evidenced in the hallowed corridors of one of the boarding houses at Wellington College. One enterprising person (presumably young man in those days) took up brushes and paint when my father was not around and quite competently added a name to the bottom of a column on the Honours Boards.

 

added to the columns D O Nald Duck

I have checked the register and there was no D. O. N. Aldduck at the college that year, however I believe that DONALD DUCK was quite a popular character at the time.

A round up of some recent jobs shows growing use of additions of work we have provided to web and facebook sites

http://www.theartagency.co.uk/Esher_Gallery/1063098/the_art_agency_gallery_opening_in_esher_october_2011.html

Facebook: Stepping Stones Cookie Bar (Gallery)

http://www.gluttonandglee.co.uk/

http://www.theknaphillian.com/  (Zeytin)

We wish the very best to all of our customers THE BAKERY, formerly Watson Bakeries, we look forward to seeing your new website soon. Café Mila in Godalming, combined with the Yoga Studio gave us the challenge of writing on walls. Wellington College we hope all goes well hosting the Round Square Conference 2011 this coming week.

http://www.rsc2011.org.uk/about-wellington-college

 

http://www.roundsquare.org/index.php?id=10&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=149&tx_ttnews[backPid]=2&cHash=d8618526b670261058d5c5cccb075f27

Test flag for RSC2011

 
See our video montage http://www.throwersigns.co.uk/movie.html

It is good to see that some people are taking an interest in the content of this blog and I thank you for your comments. Today I thought I would link one or two recent jobs with a bit of history.  For those who may be interested in traditional signwriting I thought I should first attach a couple of photographs of my Dad working.

Here he is signwriting a fascia panel. I should imagine that this is early 1950′s. Of course in those days very few photographs were kept of jobs or the work in progress. We forget in these days of instant images saved to phones and digital cameras that had the premises owners not been photographers by trade that this picture would not exist. I wonder what happened to the archive of photographs taken by Ron Francis?

Allen Thrower Signwriting

Signwriting was not Allen’s first choice. He would like to have become a teacher but illness at school prevented that. He would have been an apprentice at RAE Farnborough, but he was marginally too far down the list for that year’s intake. His brother Norman was apprenticed at the signwriting firm of Giles in Wokingham, Norman’s apprenticeship was broken somewhat fortuitously by WW2 and via the Survey of India and further hard work in the US, he eventually ended up in Los Angeles as an Emeritus Professor of Cartography at U.C.L.A. (Dr Norman J.W. Thrower, with many books to his name). Allen duly followed to Giles as an apprentice and after time spent in Canada and Singapore during the war, ended up signwriting back in the UK. Anyone who knows the village of Crowthorne in Berkshire will know of its symbiotic link with three major institutions, most recently the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL), which in my youth was know as TRRL or Road Research Laboratory and more historically the somewhat formidable (to strangers) Broadmoor Hospital and Wellington College.

Gilded Clock at Wellington College

The College can be a magnet to particular individuals and when Allen wrote C. M. St. G. Potter onto the boards he knew that his father was a Master, but could not know that now (having taught at Wellington) Mr. Potter would be Secretary of the Old Wellingtonians Society (O.W.’s or as I heard recent pupils describe it “O-Dubz”) . One of the last names Allen painted onto the oak panelling of the Cricket Pavilion (Pink Pavilion) before he passed away in 1976 was R.I.H.B. Dyer which I repeated on various boards. Mr. Dyer is currently Second Master at Wellington College. Some of the names we add may be members of Royal Families, but there are few opportunities to create a list starting with Queen Victoria, followed by Prince Albert and then The Earl of Deby and other illustrious characters, such as can be seen on the Benefactors board at Wellington by the Porters Lodge.

Benefactors board with gold leaf lettering

A link with this board is the other place where I am able to create Queen Victoria’s crest at regular intervals, which is at Queen’s College in Harley Street. This is painted onto the portico several times along with the name of the College, numerals and other text. I have done this periodically in a very dark green, but this has just recently been re-done with a hint of blue as a dark teal colour.

Signwriting to Portico at Harley Street