Sign painting is a meaningful craft with a meaningful history. Practitioners often acquired the craft through apprenticeship or trade school, but as computer design erupted, interest in the craft waned. The commercial signs of dem olden days, which were all painted by hand, offer a kind of beauty and uniqueness that today’s industrial signs have been unable to duplicate. But luckily for us, traditional sign painting has experienced a resurgence in popularity in recent years.
One of these new-traditional-sign painters is Chris Mackenzie-Gray. Based in the UK, his sign-painting services range from very small door numbers to large-scale murals, all painted with that vintage flair.
According to Mackenzie-Gray, it was while studying graphic design at LCC, that he was drawn to the analog processes of writing. “With a computer, it’s not difficult to change the layout or grid, whereas with letterpress, you have to really think about what you’re doing because it’s such a faff to change something,” he explained in an interview with Lecture in Progress.
“I did a whole bunch of research into sign painting, and one of my tutors shut down the idea,” he recalled. “Maybe they didn’t consider it graphic design, or a viable job but I just remember thinking, ‘well, that’s not something I’m going to think about again.’ I really enjoyed graphic design, but sitting at a computer nine hours a day would have left me feeling very drained.”
Today, there is only one trade school left in the U.S. for sign painting: the Los Angeles Trade Technical College. But the renewed interest in hand-painted signs might bring to the forefront the glory of typography art. For some sign painting inspiration, follow Toucan Signs’ Instagram page.
