Office wall signwriting can vary a lot depending in wording & branding. The clients this job was for had come up with their own graphic design & typography to be written across the brick walls running alongside the desk area.
The wall was two large recessed areas, or looking at it another way, had a a protruding section in the middle, which meant the clients had designed a pair of words to sit in the recessed sections or either side of the protruting part of the brick wall.
.
.
The head of the Advertising Company’s Graphic department designed the wording & in the lively colours they had previously had me produce their logo of a dog’s head with a crash helmet on. The letter type designed was a nice script style with some flourishes on some of the letters. Its a nice change every now & then to do this sort of work rather than the usual quite formal stuff.
They sent a visual of where they would like the office wall signwriting & at the prefered scale.
This was ideal as it meant I could take a drawn layout of the wording to the correct size to site, rather than several which I often do to give clients a choice.
.
.
The drawings were measured & positioned onto the wall, taped in place, made sure they were straight, which isn’t as easy as it sounds with brick walls! & then pounced with charcoal powder onto the wall to be able to see the image on the brickwork.
.
.
This is done so that when office wall signwriting there is no delay by trying to draw the design out straight onto the brick. That would end up quite time consuming & may also lead to the drawing not quite being like the design intended, so this way its a speedier process but also much neater in production too.
.
.
The main colour was applied first which was a magenta in oil based paint with powder added to matte the finish. The process for painting the letters was a dry brush & dabbing to get the requested look of it part faded or aged. Despite the lettering being on a large scale its not really possible to use a large brush due to the affect they wished for. Usually on brickwork & on this scale a decorators brush could be used rather than a signwriter brush. The brush that was used was fairly stiff bristled to allow for the dabbing without affecting the brush hairs.
.
.
Next to be painted was the thick outline, which was a time consuming process again just due to having to stipple & dab rather than paint strokes.
.
The clients took an image which shows the size of the brush being used which is a signwriter brush rather than a large decorators brush. It was doing the process in this way to create the rustic look they were after with made the work time consuming, but had been accounted for. Some office wall signwriting can be a lot quicker in production.
.
The thick ouline of the first word completed which meant just the deep blue drop shadow remained, which was also to be dabbed in the same rustic efffect.
.
This took a lot less time due to there not being as much of it compared to the other 2 colours. Once this was completed the process is then repeated for the other word on the other section of wall.
.
Another ready drawn layout was taped to the wall in the measured position & refliefed to the wall by means of a pounce & charcoal powder.
.
The block of colour was again painted frist in the magenta with the thick outline again added once the block colour was completed.
.
.
The thick outline was painted & completed & then to finish the piece & the office wall signwriting job, the dark blue drop shadow was painted in.
.
The design & paintwork covered an area of wall appox 12m in width if including the prodruding section. The job was all completed in 1 day, so it doesn’t hinder the clients workforce for long. The tables had to be moved away from the walls for access but all cables both power & internet were kept plugged in the walls & tape was used to cover them & stick them to the floor to ensure of no accidental unplugging moving the ladder along the wall.
The clients were seriously thrilled with how it came out & even filmed the process for posterity.
.
Traditional & Contemporary Hand Painted Sign Writing in London
Sign Writer Traditional Signs of London
info@traditionalsignsoflondon.uk