Early in June, the team at Taco Medic pressed go with their new Frankton premises and the walls were primed, top coated and ready for some beautiful hand painted signage.
Claire, Taco Medic's Marketing Enthusiast had engaged me back in March to discuss some hand painted signage options for their new premises in Five Mile, and I was really excited when she indicated that as soon as we entered Covid-19 Level 2, it would be all systems go on completing the project and getting their doors open to bring delicious Tacos to the people. I had measured the space previously and we had discussed and agreed upon where each piece would be positioned. At this stage they mentioned that a rough plaster finish would be applied to some of the walls to create a genuine Taqueria feel.
"Every painted surface is different and the spiky venetian plaster finish on these walls was initially pretty intimidating!"
The finish turned out to be a lot rougher than I expected and meant that I would need to change my approach a little. It would be impossible to mark out the signage with pencil, so several rolls of green tape were required - the application of which removed most of the fingerprints on my right hand. Every single job has a unique challenge!
6 days on the tools
Here's an idea of the process behind a large multi-faceted job:
Day 1: Spend the day applying green tape to the walls using a measuring tape, level, pencil-string-and-push pin compass, lots of double checking and cross-referencing of measurements and lots of standing back and surveying from different angles. My watch calculated 16,000 steps on this day alone... If the set-up is good, the painting should be plain sailing.
Day 2-3: Apply the first colour (blue) across all pieces, then the orange, then the yellow, then the green. Try not to work on any colours directly next to each other so that they bleed into one another. Make sure that on this first coat the edges of colour are as neat and final as they can be, as this is the most time consuming part on this rough texture and this will make subsequent coats of paint much faster.
Day 4: Apply 2 or 3 or more coats, depending on the colour. Make minute adjustments to the shapes of letters or circles as required.
Day 5: Finish the detailed menu - writing in all of the individual ingredients with a size 1 brush. This is concentration city.
Day 6: Spend the day clambering up and down a scaffolding rig to complete the final piece, which is curved lettering up on the bulkhead. Laugh and ask the owner if he is 'for real?!' when he suggests one of the circles I've painted isn't perfectly circular. He definitely was for real, so a wee bit of adjustment was needed so that he didn't hate that small section for eternity. It's always great when the client is a super perfectionist too.
This was a really enjoyable and satisfying job working with branding that was designed by Taco Medic's agency in Australia. Some elements of these layouts were easier than others, with curved text presenting the greatest challenge of all - especially on a wall that can't be drawn on with pencil and the base curve sits on a circle with a diameter of 4 metres.
The finished signage looks professional, at once perfect but also hand made, and most importantly, the Taco Medic team expectations have been exceeded, which is absolutely the result I aim for.
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