Steven had a talent for drawing at an early age, and was always scribbling and drawing cartoons etc. One day his father hired a “sign writer”, a friend of Steven’s older brother to do a job for him at home. Steven was only 14 at this time and watched the sign writer “Mark” do his work. He was amazed how this guy could draw out the lettering and then paint the words freehand with a small brush. This intrigued him so much that he ended up going to Marks home and helping him out of hours. Mark also taught him at this early age the creative and old fashioned craftsmanship of sign writing. By the time Steven was 15 he had already learnt this art and was already practicing it most nights and doing small jobs for his father as well. This is why Steven was able to get an apprenticeship so easy, as soon as the company owner saw he was 16 and could already sign write he was taken on immediately.
At this point in time everything was designed by hand, drawn by hand and painted by hand. It was truly an amazing trade to be in, you had to have an inner talent and creative and artistic ability to do this job. Self satisfaction was a big part of this job and often while working on site people would literally stand around for hours and simply watch what you were doing, most being amazed at how it was done.

Unfortunately the trade suffered a huge blow when computers were introduced, things were starting to be done with graphics programs and eventually computer cut lettering was introduced. This helped the industry as far as technology and speed but also started to kill off the art of sign writing and many talented individuals. Eventually the technology got better with the introduction of the digital printer and that was the end of it, hand sign writers became obsolete and are virtually no longer required in the trade anymore. This also allowed basically anyone to now own and run a “Sign” production company. The artistic ability is no longer of any value and the trade is full of “make believe” sign writers or even worse, franchised enterprises which really downgraded the quality of our industry.
To show you what kinds of jobs the old fashioned “Sign writer” used to do, Steven has provided photos of the work he did by hand many years ago.

Note: Every job and photo displayed here was designed by hand, drawn by hand and painted by hand all by Steven, NO computers were used on any of these jobs.