Commercial signs of offices tend to be a large graphic & wording on a feature wall either within the offices or in the entrance foyer to the building. This project was the latter. The ex-ITV studios on Southbank were being re-generated by investment groups into office space. They contacted Traditional Signs to produce an attention grabbing, but also relatable sign for their entrance foyer wall, which used to be the security & entrance desk for the ITV studios. Previous to this, it was LWT (London Weekend Television), so a building of late 20th century importance for London. It had hosted many programmes & 1000s of tv stars have worked and appeared there down the years.
The Clients gave the brief of something more on trend but with the sentiments of the building’s history in mind. For this Traditional signs produced a design with an offering of 2 revisions. The idea of the design being that ‘mock block’ (3d look) was en vogue So this was offered in the design. Then the idea of the ITV icon being a rounded typeface that interlinks the letters & then the colour of ITV having Teal for the ‘This Morning Studios’ wording that used to adorn the Thames facing studio wall.
The result being the image below, which the clients were more than happy with.
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The clients gave measurements of the wall area to be painted & an artwork of the design was re-sized onto paper to be used as a layout, which could be reliefed onto the wall on site.
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The artwork was produced in the studio on paper to the ideal sizing, with the image drawn & in a ‘pounce pattern’ (pin pricked). The first part of the project on site was to re-paint the wall white with quick dry, internal, water based paint. The whole wall had bad staining from the old ITV signage or images. Once the wall had been re-painted the artwork could be measured into place. The wall measurements were taken & centre marks were made to ensure the correct placement of the artwork. The artwork also having centre points marked. The artwork is taped into place ensuring the lettering is level. Then the image is reliefed onto the wall by ‘pouncing’, which is paodding powder through the pin pricked holes.
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Once the layout was reliefed, the painting of the commercial signs could commence. It was decided to produce all the artwork from the top of the wall and work downwards. The reason for this was to not rub any of the ‘pounced’ artwork from the wall with the ladder, but also so the ladder wouldn’t lean on any wet paint smearing any of the signage already produced.
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The painting of the commercial signs was a labour intensive process. Partly due to its size, but also due to it being 3 colours. Specialist signwriting brushes were used to produce such crisp lined lettering. This also created a slightly more time consuming workload, but its not always about speed, its also about producing a quality product.
Once the top line of text was completed it was onto the middle level, which was produced in the same way. Teal colour first then the black & finishing with the grey shadow. the reason for this was to allow the Teal colour to dry whilst producing the black, which allowed for the grey to be tight to the teal lines, with little to no chance of one colour bleeding into another.
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The lower level of text was produced last which meant a bit less ladder usage, which sped the process up a little. It was also decided to produce the black colour of the lettering first. I don’t recall why but as long as its produced neatly its not of too much importance. The project was produced over 2 days, including the repainting of the wall white. It may have even been that due to the lighting within the building, the artwork ‘pouncing’ was more difficult to see.
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The last work to complete the commercial signs was to wipe off all the charcoal powder used to ‘pounce’ the image onto the wall. This had a fair bit of excess powder, so took a bit of time to do, but once done it was job done! The clients were really pleased with the result & it makes for a stand out piece in the entrance to their office lettings.
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Hand Painted Traditional & Contemporary Sign writing in London
Sign writer: Traditional Signs of London
info@traditionalsignsoflondon.uk