Back before the pandemic I spent a week under the tutelage of Joby Carter, one of the UK’s best known and talented sign writers.
Joby and his wife Georgina run the Carters Travelling Funfair started by his Parents John and Anna Carter back in 1977., but they don’t just tour with the funfair – they do all the restoration, maintenance, and upkeep of these wonderful machines which date from 1895 to the mid 1960s. Which of course includes repainting them with traditional coach painting and signwriting techniques that Joby learnt from his mentor Stan Wilkinson and in turn passed them onto his trustee sidekick Aaron Stephens.
The week with Joby was great fun, by the end of it I had just about managed a straight line with a brush and coach paint… my hands were stained green from all the paint and my head was full of the wonderful lettering we saw in the workshop and around the yard.
My job (I need to work really fast as a graphic recorder) and my natural impatience made it really hard to slow down and take my time butI got there in the end. We spent a couple of days just practicing painting lines before Joby lead us through the process of drawing up the letters, and adding a block and shadow. Block is the term Joby uses to make a letter appear three dimensional and the addition of a shadow helps bring it to life and stand out from the background. Joby showed us his technique using a piece of card to help with the measurements when it came to adding the block and shadow and. One letter was enough for me so I chose to concentrate my final ‘masterpiece’ on a simple piece – the letter E with block and drop shadow.
And here it is!
I took the course to learn more about the anatomy, design and structure of letters and I certainly came away with a better understanding. If you’d like to learn about signwriting I can highly recommend Joby’s book Signwriting Tips, Tricks and Inspiration, which you can buy from the Carter’s website at the price of just £20.
Joby is also running a Signwriters festival and has a Patreon group where you can support his restoration projects and join his Signwriting Club. Check out his Facebook page for more info.