Restaurant signs were required for a refit at a Turkish Restaurant in West London.
The clients had stripped back their premises to the original bare brick wall. The walls were at best rustic, bordering on rough. This posed a challenge as they wished for the restaurant signs to stretch across the whole wall. All 5 metres or so of it. Orginally the request was for a vintage design but in the end after several mock ups the client prefered the look of the font & colours on a American Dollar bill.
A layout & drawing was produced prior to being on site, so the sizing was correct & the font style was accurate. The uneven surface meant that all the lettering had to be pricked using a pounce wheel.
It meant marking out with a stabilo wasn’t ideal but a chalk snap line & a the pounce was the key to getting the layout produced onto the surface.
This image shows the chalk pounce on the brickwork, which was visable close up to work to, but not very visable further away from the brickwork, but its only used a guide to paint to, so temporary just during the painting process.
As can be seen the surface was very uneven & had a lot of render gaps. At times the render came away as the paint was applied! The bricks weren’t consistant, Some were horizonal as normal but many were on their ends which seemed unusual & a little difficult to keep lines straight while painting.
The client prefered to have the white paint more solidly painted rather than dry brush to create the rustic aged & distressed appeal. The gaps in the brickwork still leant itself to that kind of look anyway. It did make painting in all the nooks & crannies of the brickwork a bit more time consuming than planned.
All of the main wording painted stretching across 5 metres of wall. From this image the roughness of the walls structure can be seen. Its fair to say it was never built with the intention of being a display feature!
The wording very much helping to make an improvement. The next step was to add a sub heading stating the restaurant’s year of establishment. The white signwriting became the drop shadow & the main writing was in oil based green paint mixed to a shade close to the Dollar bill colour. The sub heading had a ‘block’ (san serif) style of lettering & was produced with smaller but more regular signwriting brushes.
All lettering painted as crisp edged as possible, with a good covering of paint so not to look aged & overly rustic. This was all that was achieveable within the first day on site, so the rest had to be completed on a 2nd day.
The 2nd day was started producing the black drop shadow on the main lettering. Again it was about good coverage, so more painting all the nooks & crannies but also getting them crisp edges to keep the signwriting neat. This was again quite time consuming but can’t be rushed as it would lead to paint running or bleeding where it wasn’t required or unstraight edges.
The black signwriting added a lot more definition to the white lettering & made the branding stand out from the wall a lot more. This completed the main wall section. The main wall had a partition & the client requested the other part of the wall have signwriting too. This was to match the ‘Est’ lettering. The request was for a ‘blank’ rectangle but with a painted green frame. Then to have the wording at the top. This was to form a notice board area.
The pounce method was again used to be able to place the wording at the correct size & in the required measured area. This time as the writing was smaller & the brickwork was closer to the windows, it was blue chalk that was used, so the layout would be more visable to do the signwriting.
It became easier to paint the white drop shadow first, then add the green block of colour afterwards with the white having dried reasonably quickly. This was done just to help with any bleeds of paint & to assist with the crisp edges.
The area this signwriting was applied to the brickwork wasn’t all that better than the larger area of wall, but the writing was covering less of the brick so wasn’t as time consuming.
The differently laid bricks are quite noticable in this image of the completed signwriting, showing how it was difficult to use the bricks as a straight line guide, so only tape measures & chalk lines could be used. You can see horizontal laid bricks above & below the notice board signage but a mixed bag within the signage.
The final piece to be produced for the clients was a design they had come up with which was a phase to sum up their business name & ethos but with the look of it being an excerpt from the dictionary.
With the writing needing to be so precise & with the positioning for a signwriter to paint it, it was a far easier option to paint mask this, rather than paint while sitting on the floor for a long time with brushes trying to get it percise. Thats just back breaking & too time consuming.
Once dried the writing was covered with a ‘pencil’ varnish so the paint was trapped to the surface by the varnish & once hardened it meant the surface of the tiles could be cleaned without the paint coming off.
A nice touch to the serving counter, which has a contrast to the rest of the restaurant signs of pricise crisp & contrasting with a polished surface rather than the rough rustic look of the brickwork.
To add a bit of a tone into both pieces of brick work signage, a green stripe/band was added above & below the wording, which blended a bit more with the notice board sign. This completed the job, so the rest of the restaurant could be kitted out to complete its refurb.
The restaurant signs with the refurb completed. Some nice hanging rustic vintage lighting was added infront of the main branding.
Traditional & Contemporary Hand Painted Sign Writing in London
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