Painted signs designed & produced on a period building in Hampstead in for a healthcare business by Traditional Signs of London.

The clients had a business premises which had been converted from a residential property, so didn’t have the ususal retail frontage. Instead it had bay windows with a pair of cured fascias above the windows.

They contacted Traditional Signs of London to assist with the design & overall appearnace to make it neat functional but also asthetically pleasing.

The clients came with a colour pallete some branding & a logo, so it was more about making it fit & suit the frontage, rather than offering colours, branding & logos from scratch.

When creating painted signs of this nature, its important that all wording & branding look like it fits its surroundings rather than made to fit.

This meant there were a few revisions of designs placements & wording before all were agreed that the final layout & design was the most suitable.

 

 

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The studio work continues once the design has been agreed upon.

Measurements of the frontage are taken & used to scale the artwork to ensure all painted signs will fit perfectly as per the design.

The measurements are used to scale all wording to size, before paper templates are produced for each section of wording. These artworks are then taken to site, measured into place ensuring all are level & upright.

The artworks are then reliefed onto the panels ready for the painted signs to be produced.

To ensure everyone is in agreement with this a visual is offered the client prior to production on site.

Adjustments can be made if required but its better that the client has more an idea of what the end product will look like.

This is paramount to Traditional Signs of London, as client satisfaction is the main aim, as its their property and business. This isn’t overlooked.

 

 

 

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The painted signs are started by producing the pale shadow colour first. In this instance it was the shadow of the wording above the right hand side window, the property number in the centre & the larger of the hearts within the logo.

A touch more purple was then added to create the middle heart within the logo, before using the darker shade of purple for the remainder of the painted signs.

 

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The differing sizes of lettering require different sizes of specialist brushes. The method in painting is the same.

When creating neat lettering, its stroke building to create letters rather than single strokes. Despite most of this lettering being san serif its still neater to create each letter with sevral strokes.

So for example, the most simple letter . . . I, will be built up with 4 strokes rather than 1 single brush stroke.

Its possible to do single stokes but the letter edge finish isn’t as crisp as every wibble of the hand can notice in the finished lettering.

Speed was of the essence with this project simply due to the weather conditions & time of year. It was fading light by late afternoon.

The weather was overcast leaning towards drizzle, which isn’t ideal for external painted signs. Oil based paints are used but water can’t get in the paint, rather than it affects the lettering already painted.

 

 

 

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The fascia panel was all completed leaving only the logo on the wall panel to finish off. The light was fading but the work to complete was fairly straight forward.

The heart was painted in with a large size chisel brush so was filled within only a handful of strokes, which left the hands outlining to be produced which was created using single strokes with a smaller chisel brush, using skill & experience to ensure all lines were painted to the same thickness.

 

 

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Hand Painted Traditional & Contemporary Sign writing in London

Sign writer: Traditional Signs of London

info@traditionalsignsoflondon.uk