Keeping the craft alive
Wayne Osborne left school and became a sign-writer. No training, no course, no college, no apprenticeship. And yet he is become one of the industry’s most respected and talented traditional sign-writers
Thursday, 19 Feb 2015 13:26 GMT
Man of signs: One of Wayne Osborne’s students applying his teaching
The sign-writer of Midhurst in Sussex was keen on art and drawing at school, but fortunately when he left to join the adult world in 1993 he had a mentor in a local sign-writer called Don Hickey who helped him in his early days. However Wayne became self-employed as a sign-writer straight away and has remained in business ever since.
He says: “At school I was keen on the old-fashioned subject of technical drawing and graphic design on paper and it’s where I started to use air brushes and doing layouts. That’s really where I developed my skills which I used in signwriting.”
Ironically perhaps for someone who has never been formally trained, Osborne now runs training courses in traditional sign-writing at his workshop with one day sessions for those interested in the skills. He also says on his website that he is regularly contacted by individuals who want to learn more about hand lettering and the art and craft of signwriting. The courses give practical tuition to: “Beginners, hobbyists, schools groups and even a paint technician from Rolls-Royce motor cars.”
He explains: “There is a need out there as the colleges have all kind of fallen away with providing courses. Possibly because there’s nobody out there to teach sign-writing full-time but there certainly is a demand for it. Especially for people who have an interest in hand lettering. The kind of people I’m getting through the classes are not the sort who want to be a sign-writers as a trade.
Students tend to be printers working with letterpress or ordinary
graphic designers who want to get away from the clip art machine and use
sign-writing within their own work again”
“They are graphic designers or type designers or people who have an interest in it. Nobody has come through and said I want to come and be a sign-writer or had a previous need for it because it’s within their trade. Students tend to be printers working with letterpress or ordinary graphic designers who want to get away from the clip art machine and use sign-writing within their own work again.
“I’ve one guy now who makes fonts and he was very interested to get back to basics. He’ll start to do that then he’ll hand paint something and then go back and digitise it. I had another guy who all he wanted to do was put his own signature to his own boat that he was making. He was the kind of guy who would cut the tree down if he could and do everything. He wasn’t taking work away from anyone, he just wanted that in his arsenal.”
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