Working with some of the biggest names in sport!
Now if that was the literal truth I wouldn’t have forgotten most of them would I! (it was a long time ago).
The Concept
When I met the client you could tell this was to be the pièce de résistance of the new shop fit out. He had gone to great lengths and spent considerable money to acquire the use of some of the biggest sporting signatures for his new store floor!.
Following the graphics around the shop and seeing who’s name you would come across next would create a unique customer experience.
There was a blend of international and Aussie sports stars as well as local heroes – the Balmain Tiger Boys of the day – including Wayne ‘Junior’ Pearce, Steve ‘Blocker’ Roach, ‘Bouncing’ Benny Elias and of course big Paul ‘Sirro’ Sironen.
The Challenge
Fast drying paints, fast turnaround and working on the floor!
The Procedure
We would need the floor to be clear (and other tradesman free) for at least 3 days. The flipside of that would be a narrow window of opportunity to complete the work. Painting the basecoat on Friday night. Starting the graphics and signwriting on Saturday afternoon. Working through the night and whatever it took to finish on Sunday. The floor would be getting a protective clear coat on Monday
The floor had to be painted and signwritten in a Two-Pack specialty paint application. This would provide as much strength and durability for the signwriting as possible, The main problem with signwriting in Two-Pack is it only stays the right consistency for a short period of time. Although adding thinners is necessary, keeping that to a minimum is important to maintain the integrity of the paint characteristics.
The fumes from the two-pack also meant I couldn’t work while there were customers in the centre.
The design drawing main graphics would be ‘gridded up’ and then scaled up proportionally straight onto the floor. I also ‘gridded up’ the names and ‘drew’ them by hand.
The funny thing about using grids is it still feels like cheating – it becomes a bit of a join the dots process.
There was no masking used here.
Painting the shapes and lines wasn’t too bad I was able to stand up and bend forward – using a 1 inch 12mm and 2 inch 24mm ‘signcutters’ (looks like a regular paintbrush). I had some help from one of the painters to help fill in the main graphic colours and if I remember rightly he was then off to a party – you know the line “I’d love to stay and help but…” then I was left to my own devices. I didn’t know too many other Sydney signwriters to call on back in those days.
And then the real work began – and the kneeling!
I’m not sure why but I didn’t wear any kneepads (I don’t even remember them back in the day). But I would be spending much of the rest of the job on them (I did use some other kind of padding), then propped up on my left elbow, lying down the rest of the time. I started signwriting the names sometime on Saturday afternoon and finished the following morning.
The Middle
Suffice to say I was conducting very different one man party on my own. I had the radio cranking, inhaling a pretty good dose of two-pack over the course of those hours. Some air guitar virtuosity (if I must say so myself) would provide a short break and blood circulating opportunity between signwriting each of the names. Along with the backdrop of the deserted shopping centre providing a quasi twilight zone ambiance for the long night ahead.
The only other sign of life was the intermittent rounds of a couple of security guards. Which did become a little more regular as the night wore on. They could probably sense the paint fumes and my lack of sleep in combination really starting to kick in.
I would take a slightly larger break in between changing colours. But I knew once I was changing colours (blue, red, green and black) the names were another 25% complete.
The End
You know when you take on a reasonable undertaking (or even a long distance drive for that matter), when you get into that last leg and heading towards the finish you just can’t imagine going any further, well that was definitely the case for me.
…or was it (the deja vu)
I can really only finish this signwriting story one way. Despite my efforts to get the floor done on time it was just a dress rehearsal. The painters had come into the shop on Monday morning to put the clear coat over the top to protect signwriting and graphics. They didn’t have any lights with them (literally painting in the dark). They proceeded to clear over the footprints they were creating.
Well they say the start of the journey starts with a single step. Well I was to revisit this one with a few hundred steps just a few days later!