Chris Mackenzie-Gray paints signs for a living – a niche he carved out for himself after graduating with a degree in graphic design at LCC, with a focus on typography. Working both digitally and by hand, his business – Toucan Signs – offer sign-painting services ranging from very small door numbers to large-scale murals, and everything else in between.
“I think a lot of businesses are starting to see how, in a row of shops with neon or plastic signs, a nice piece of handprinted signage can set you apart,” Mackenzie-Gray remarked in an interview with Lecture in Progress. “There’s that tangibility to it. It’s human.”
Amongst his many happy clients are Honest Burgers and the Museum of London, with his painting surfaces also varying, to include brick walls, gloss, shop faces, and glass.
“There’s a few different ways of doing it,” he says. “You can draw a design, print it up on acetate, project it onto the wall, trace it onto wrapping paper, and then use the pounce, (or pounce-wheel), running it over the design perforates the paper, and then use a chalk pad. You put your design on the wall where you want it, bang the chalk pad through, take the paper off and you’ve got a dotted line. A lot of these methods are hundreds of years old; things haven’t changed much at all.”
“I’m so glad that I can do this job, that there are clients that will pay me to do it,” he concluded.
