The local sign writing shop said they’d get back to me with a mock-up of some vinyl stickers for my ute. Primarily, the tailgate Logo I had designed and a few door stickers to add colour and contact details for my window cleaning business.
The lady was pleasant and said it could be a little while as they were quite busy. A week later as I was waiting for the mock-ups to land in my inbox, I wondered if there was a DIY solution that could save a few dollars and give me a little more creative freedom. With that, I dove deep down the rabbit hole of hand-painted vehicle livery.
Before CNC vinyl cutters were industry standard, enamel paint, carefully applied with a squirrel hair brush was the preferred method of applying business details to vehicles. Sign-writers were skilled craftsmen, laying out designs with chalk and line, a curated selection of fonts embodied in their being through years of practice.
Hand-painted signs aren’t a new interest for me.
At eighteen while working on maintenance at a private school, I met a fellow with his paint and brushes who had been hired to restore some of the historic signs around the school as well as painting, “WATCH YOUR STEP” with a yellow line at the top and bottom of every flight of concrete stairs around the grounds.
I remember watching him and thinking, “This is cool, is this a real job?”
I had enjoyed painting words and images on my own stuff as a child, when I was ten I painted “Wild Thing” on the side of a bright red billy cart my grandpa built for me before a Sunday school race.
Giving things a name, playing with typography, colour and design gives things a new layer of depth and meaning. These signs light up our brains with emotion, remind us of our hopes, dreams and intentions.
Rather than paying for some vinyl stickers for my ute, I decided to hand-paint my window cleaning logo on the tailgate.
Sign-writing supplies like paint and brushes aren’t readily available and I ended up finding a supplier in Melbourne where I purchased my first brushes and a few tins of 1shot paint.
Finding a few smaller brushes to complete my design however took a little more searching. Until one afternoon I placed an order with a business in Melbourne’s North East, Bi-wize.
Expecting the order to take a few weeks, I was very surprised to look out my window the next morning to see the Bi-Wize van. I put down the guitar and wandered out to say hello to a fellow waving a small envelope at me.
It turns out John, the Bi-wize guy, does deliveries in the Geelong region and figured he’d stop by with the brushes himself. He was curious about what I was using them for as apparently not many people purchase sign-writing brushes.
I showed John the hand-painted Logo on my tailgate, “Framed” in a Holden sandman style typeface. John grinned at me.
“Very Torquay. That’s art, that is.”
John went on to tell me about his time as a sign-writer and referred me to Larry Stammers, an old school sign-writer who teaches beginner workshops out of his home garage.
The exchange with John was brief but it breathed new life into a spark that had been dormant in me for a long time.
As I walked back up the garden path, I smiled to myself.
In an age where it feels like everyone is trying to outsource their work to machines or AI, there’s something invigorating about an industry that values the humanity of the craft. An industry where driving an hour and a half to deliver a few paint brushes makes sense.
An industry like sign-writing.
