Nick Garrett Signwriting Bodoni today

This Classical Bodoni Font of ours – Nick NGS

NGS are renowned for our hand-painted Didot, Bodoni, and refined Roman lettering because we treat historical typefaces as living components, never using ‘inert’ digital fonts.

Instead of enlarging a computer font and tracing it, we redraw every letter from the original NGS achives and designs.

Layouts are then adjusted by proportion, spacing, weight, and colourtone to suit the building, glass, or panel.

The knowledgebase of over 40 years is where the work becomes incomparable.

Off the drawing board

NGS studies original letterforms from original artisan letter carvers and printers such as Giambattista Bodoni and the Didot family. Nick then reconstructs them for the process of brush painting.

This preparation often entails:

Fine tuning contrast thickness to match historic settings;

Subtly adjusting and condensing letteris for client specific application;

Varying serifs for balance and beauty;

Playing with optical weights so a painted word reads at quicker minimalist or slower traditional pace.

FOOTNOTE: The love behind it

Perhaps the defining characteristic of NGS is that they appear to value letters as cultural objects, not simply communication.

Across their journals they describe:

• studying Roman inscriptions in Italy;
• restoring forgotten London shop lettering;
• developing their own “Truecut” interpretations;
• refining alphabets over many years rather than accepting digital defaults;
• preserving the humanity of historical signwriting.

That explains why clients often recognise an NGS sign before reading the name.

The letters have what old signwriters sought above everything else: presence.

Each serif, curve and space carries evidence of the person who made it. The result is lettering that doesn’t merely display words— it gives them weight, dignity and a sense of belonging to London’s architectural tradition.