Hana Sunny Studios is run by Hana Sunny Whaler in South East London
Write your own script
The art of putting paint to paintbrush and creating immaculate letters to form a sign is one that has been around for hundreds of years.
Historically, hints of signs and messages are found etched into the walls of caves in the form of pictures and symbols. With the development of cities and towns came the development of street names and businesses and so the need for signage grew.
According to London-based signwriter, Richard Gregory, the earliest known signwriting in western civilisation is ancient Roman dating back to the first century AD. According to Gregory, signwriters in Pompeii would paint notices on walls for elections and gladiator games.
Gregory says: “The development of the craft of signwriting, with all of its traditional methods, was effectively complete by the start of the Victorian era – in 1854 William Sutherland was describing techniques that were already well-established, including glass-gilding, in the earliest printed tutorials.”
Over 160 years later, and hand painted signs can be found on pub menu boards, A-boards, shop fascias, and commonly on narrow boats.
A ‘dying’ trade
Mark Josling is a 56-year-old married father of two. He left school at 16 and worked as a trainee printer and a postman before becoming a signwriter. Josling explains how he even pitched the idea of becoming a signwriter to a school careers advisor at the age of 15, but was discouraged from entering a ‘dying trade’.
Mark Josling has been a signwriter for over 40 years
Josling persevered by enrolling on the City and Guilds Signwork course at Hammersmith College and after getting a Distinction in his exam, gained employment with a signwriting company in Wembley.
Three decades later and Josling is still working in the trade and has been running his own company, Spectrum Signs, since 1988.
“I initially produced exclusively hand lettered work but gradually started to incorporate vinyl graphics as the demand for traditional signwriting began to diminish,” Josling says, adding: “However, it was the reason I came into the industry so I have always retained certain traditional work, such as honours boards and pub signs.
“For the last ten or so years, I have done almost exclusively hand lettering as the demand for it has returned, although I design vinyl graphic jobs and I have a vinyl fitter who prepares and applies the graphics.”
Spectrum Signs produces a range of work from pub and restaurant signs to signwriting for film and TV productions. A main source of work for Josling is producing hand lettered honours boards for golf clubs, schools and organisations mainly using gold leaf.
Josling’s experience with the school careers advisor is a telling example of the lack of routes into the trade. He says: “The reason I think there is a lack of educational pathways into signwriting is largely due to it almost disappearing around twenty years ago. Consequently, it lost credibility as a serious profession. Hopefully that’s starting to be addressed now.”
A creative craft
For other signwriters, the path into the industry can start from studying creative subjects at university and college. This was the case for signwriters Hana Sunny Whaler of Hana Sunny Studio, Georgina Tozer of Tozer Signs, and Mia Warner.
Georgina Tozer runs Tozer Signs from a studio in Bedminster, Bristol
Warner studied graphic design and says she became “obsessed” with the more manual processes that happen before fonts reach computers. She explains: “I had a wonderful tutor who showed me the work of Joby Carter and then I discovered the (at the time) little world of signs through Instagram.
I had a wonderful tutor who showed me the work of Joby Carter and then I
discovered the (at the time) little world of signs through Instagram”
“I did a weekend course with the brilliant Cooper and Katie at Dapper Signs in Bristol, and then jumped in. I’ve been painting signs for 10 years, probably painting them ‘properly’ for about seven.”
Mia Warner is a signwriter based in East London. Image: Helena Dolby for 93ft
Like Josling, Warner’s working days are varied and she produces all sorts of signs from clean gold signage for restaurants, to what she describes as “bouncy colourful signs” for an ice-cream shop. Warner also produces work for films which is something she has only recently started doing.
Warner has been painting signs for ten years. Image: Helena Dolby for 93ft
Warner says: “The hours are killer, but there’s something really magical about painting beautiful signs for imaginary worlds. Plus, I’m surrounded by happy people creating so many cool things.”
For Bristol-based Tozer, it was an illustration course that sparked her interest in signwriting seven years ago. With no official course in the UK for signwriting, she says she didn’t see the industry as a possibility at first. Then when a module allowed her to ignore illustration and look into other things, she taught herself the tricks of the trade and didn’t look back.
Tozer says: “I would mostly just sit at home and I would practice diagonals, and straights, and cornering off, and tapering, all day long, everyday. And eventually techniques like gold leafing, water gilding, and it just kept growing and growing.
I would mostly just sit at home and I would practice diagonals, and
straights, and cornering off, and tapering, all day long, everyday”
“I luckily got to the point where it came to the time to graduate that I had enough clients built up that I could go straight into it, so I was really lucky with that. It was mainly a lot of pub sign work and chalk signs to begin with and since then I’ve built up bigger clients and done a lot of fascia work and private commissions and in the past year, murals.”
From a studio in Bedminster, Bristol, Tozer produces traditional hand painted signs for restaurants and pubs, as well as water guilds, gold leaf lettering, and more recently large-scale murals around the city.
Tozer Signs has produced a number of murals around Bristol
South East London-based Sunny Whaler also studied illustration. It was during a project where she had to design a book jacket. Sunny Whaler painted a typographic coanal-boat-style design onto a plank of wood, photographed it, and submitted it as her design.
She recalls: “It sparked something big, and I’ve never looked back. I began painting signs for paying customers in 2013/14 whilst still studying and have been pursuing the passion ever since.”
Operating under Hana Sunny Studios, Sunny Whaler produces work for pubs, independent shops and businesses and says she has been told she has a “pretty traditional British style”, hand-drawn with “a bit of flow” and often scrollwork and pictorial elements.
A sense of community
Despite the growth of computer aided design (CAD), wide-format print, and the use of vinyl films for sign-making, the art of traditional signwriting is now seemingly experiencing a resurgence. That being said, the coming together of signwriters across the globe is something that has cemented the passion for the art for many.
Speak to any signwriter and they will most likely mention at some point the word ‘Letterheads’. Founded in Denver, Colorado in 1975 by a group of sign shop apprentices and signwriters including Rick Flores, John Frazier, Bob Mitchell, and Mark Oatis, Letterheads events are now hosted annually all around the world.
O Factoid: The oldest known signwriting in Western civilisation dates back to the first century AD O
The events are the coming together of signwriters to share skills, teach tricks and give the chance to learn from workshops and demonstrations. Letterheads also provide a space to meet like-minded, passionate people dedicated to keeping the craft alive.
Josling says: “My first experience of a Letterheads event was in Great Yarmouth in 1987. Attending that and reading the American magazine Signcraft, opened up a whole network of people that I’m still in touch with and often call on to help with larger projects.
“When I first started, there wasn’t the same willingness to share knowledge and advice. The Letterheads has changed this massively. In fact, it’s quite the reverse now. I think there’s more than enough work to go around at the moment and hopefully that will continue.”
For Sunny Whaler, Letterheads events provide the opportunity to develop and learn a craft that doesn’t necessarily fit in the academic sphere of colleges and universities. She says: “I think it’s because signwriting sits between so many different classifications - it was done by craftspeople and those with artistic skill, but classified a trade, so taught that way. I don’t personally think signwriters are artists - we are more like craftspeople.
“I believe that formally taught signwriting should happen at trade schools and through apprenticeships, rather than at university. There’s certainly an element of ‘studying’ to it, practice, and patience, but it’s not academic. It suits people who want to be out in the world and not in a lecture theatre! The Letterheads is the perfect archaic, nurturing, hands-on learning environment for signwriters of all experience levels.”
For Warner, not being able to attend these meets during Covid-19 made her realise how important the events are. She adds: “Letterhead meets are important for brushing up on your skills, meeting other painters and keeping the craft alive.
“They’re also definitely important for our mental health, as we’ve found out by not being able to attend one during Covid times. Turns out we need each other more than we realised.”
Balance is key
You may have noticed from the list of founders of the Letterhead events, that the signwriting industry was traditionally a male-dominated one.
Having been in the trade for over 40 years, Josling says he has experienced the industry to be more male-oriented, however he notes there does appear to be more of a balance recently.
For Tozer, whilst she has also noticed more of a balance emerging, she does note that she is one of the only women that she knows of working full-time as a signwriter in her city of Bristol.
She says: “I’ve definitely noticed that in the past few years there is a bit more of a balance happening slowly. Especially within traditional signwriting. But just looking in my own city of Bristol, there’s quite a noticeable difference.
“There’s mainly men working full-time as signwriters. I think I might be the only one in Bristol that’s a woman working full-time. There are a few people that I know of that are just starting out and exploring it which is really good.”
Tozer adds: “When you go [to Letterheads], it almost seems like 50/50 now which is really good. If you look on Instagram or online, you’re finding more women sign painters. So I’m really glad that it’s levelling out a bit because when you do look at the older generation, it’s almost entirely older men.
“There’s even a thing of ‘the old boys’ of signwriting, you never say ‘old people’ of signwriting, you say ‘he’s one of the old boys’ because that’s what they were. But its gradually getting more and more equal.”
Sunny Whaler has also experienced this shift at Letterheads events. She says: “I certainly do believe the balance is fairer, even in the short amount of time I’ve been in the trade I’ve seen more women coming into things and making big changes.
“I think my generation of painters is still male dominated - at the Tokyo Letterheads in 2017, I think myself and a couple of others were the only females in the Panel Jam zone - but in the Newbies / Workshop areas, there were probably more girls than guys. Movements like the Pre-Vinylettes have been a huge asset to the signwriting community, I think now we need to shift our focus to encouraging other really important types of diversity, such as ethnicity and race.”
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