Restaurant sign writing hand painted for a freshly refurbished & rebranded Thai eatery in Borough, situated between the Shard & Tower Bridge. The restaurant was previously owned by the current owners father, who had the restaurant under his own name, but now he has handed the reigns down a generation & so a new name was created for it & also a fresh look.
It can often be the case when setting up a fresh look & there being several in charge, that decisions can be delayed & debated. That was the case for this revamp. There was around a month’s delay & the designs had been produced by a designer. This caused indecisiveness between the owners & the designer as to the colour of the wording, the sizing & the layout.
With this in mind it was put to them that I produced several different layouts of the same font in different sizes. Then I mix the colour on site so a shade could be chosen. The difficulty with the colour, which is often the case is that paint is made with pigment & isn’t the same as a computer generated colour. Add to this that the background colour makes a difference in how bright the signwriting colour appears & if that signwriting colour isn’t next to darker or lighter shades like on a colour chart your eye alters it for you.
Once the sizing of the branding was decided for the fascia, which took some moving about & changing of sizes with several choice changes on site, the design design was pounced/reliefed onto the fascia surface, so it could be painted accurately in place. The marking out is seen in the form of chalk lines & tape to guide the centre of the branding to the fascia’s centre.
The colour the graphic designer had gone with was ‘skintone’. That means nothing to a signwriter. Firstly whose skintone is the colour based on, but secondly on water based paint charts may have that as a name for a colour, and even then it depends on the range of paint. I’m not even sure if ‘skintone’ was a paint colour & not just a colour named from a graphic designers computer palette wheel. This is why the paint was mixed on site. The clients were happy with the mix of colour once explained that if as pale as wished for it would look white against the dark green, so the shade was darkened with their approval.
On the fascia the colour looked like a warm off white in some lights & a more pink in other lights, which is the look the clients were going for.
With the fascia restuarant sign writing completed after having 2 coats of paint to make fully opaque, the street numerals were added at either end of the building. These were painted within 2 recessed roundel cornices on the building pillars.
The centre point of the roundel was marked out & then the numerals were drawn on before being signwritten. Again having 2 coats of paint for better coverage.
The building was a large one, as it was formerly a pub. The restaurant signage was minimalist given the size of the building but with so many recessed areas, which were previously windows or framed panels it was probably the best way to present the look. As you can see the building is also far from straight until the entrance door from the left hand side, so this would’ve made having signage to one side of the building difficult to look straight.
The last piece of restaurant sign writing they required was painting a supplied hanging sign panel. It was requested that there was somewhere to rest the panel & be able to paint at a comfortable height. I was assured this was the case. As it turned out it wasn’t the case! the best I could work with was resting the panel on a window sill & sitting on one of their new bar stools.
This predictably led to the board slipping off the window sill when the mahl stick was rested on it to create neat work. This in turn led to the board hitting the pot of paint of the window sill & spilling all over the floor & freshly painted radiator. I carry clean up wipes & enough white spirit for these accidents & so the area was fully cleaned, but delayed my work, when it could’ve been prevented. This led to frustration which again could’ve been prevented.
The painting of the panel was delayed due to the clients changing thier minds several times about the layout of the branding on the panel, even at this late stage. I was more than accepting on altering it to how they agreed to have it, but it did delay the day much futher. It meant painting the panel twice both sides to make the lettering fully opaque a challenge to get completed in the day, when you add dry times to each coat of paint applied, which is 4 coats in total.
This is a common problem when clients wish for a hanging sign. They often wish to cut corners, produce it themselves & have it painted on the day. To a degree this is no problem if accounted for & time consumption taken into account. Unfortunately if there is delays it makes it much more difficult to complete in time, especially if there isn’t anywhere comfortable or convienient to paint it. Its often much better to have the panel prepared by the signwriter, painted before the on site restaurant signage & delivered to site on the day the other signage is painted.
The wording for the hanging sign panel was drawn to a few different sizes & layouts before a decision was made by the clients after much discussions between them.
The decision wasn’t made until the layout had been drawn onto the panel several times too. This is also time consuming & delays any dry time of the paint on each side of the panel.
Applying the signwriting as best it could be in the situation. The angle of the board being propped up like this did mean the first side could dry while the 2nd side was being painted.
This completed the restaurant sign writing for them. They fitted attachements to the panel themselves so it could be hung from a bracket. Once completed it did give a much better appearance from when their father run the restaurant with his own name & branding. im sure the 2 siblings will make a success of the place as they seem to know what their are doing when it comes to the restaurant trade despite having trained in other fields.
Siblings Roselyn & Bank with the restaurant ready for business. The inside looks really good & welcoming venue for their Thai food.
How the restaurant signs looked prior to the siblings taking over from their father, Suchard. Its best described as eclectic & unique an appearance! Its fair to say Roselyn & Bank have made a much more neutral style & a more calming ambience with the new look & branding.
Traditional & Contemporary Hand Painted Sign writing in London
Sign writer – Traditional Signs of London
info@traditionalsignsoflondon.uk