Trad Twist mix NGS Soho Retro
A great mix of contemporary retro classics to inspire.
Our ability to take the old and refresh is shown on this page and across the site.
We’re equally happy assisting and faithfully replicating your own design material or you need us to help create your brand ID the results are always prompt and above the quality lines.
A Legendary London deserving of
NO ORDINARY TYPE
Gill Sans Bold Condensed for Regent Sounds and Johnston Type for McGlashan’s
For McGlashan’s we noted their desire for Baker St/Marylebone heritage and era mood. Our fine tuning included polishing kerning and introducing some micro characteristics found in the Baker St. station heritage Johnston signage.
We call Baker St our typographic ‘Johnston museum station’. It’s featured on our APP, adorned with original signage typography in situ in that fabulous station.
NGS
Creative Style and Typographic Design Mastery
Sometimes rather Plain,
always Beautiful, English Lettering.
Incised Didot and Bodoni Font, Choosing Keeping shop Covent Garden.
“Fashions fade, style is eternal.”
Yves Saint Laurent
STYLE ALWAYS OUTSHINES FASHION
But probably never really needs to.
It’s easy to taste the allure of new splashes of fashionista design trends… they instantly appeal, sugar coated, transient, beautiful, and are just plain yummy eye candy, nay addictive!
… yep we all love the odd choc treat and slice of tiramisu.
NG
But almost instantly these over sweetened styles become meteoric, and over saturated. With Insta and Tic Tok coverage everything is ‘out of the bag’ and so last year.
As a designer I’d be asked by design developers and manufacturers, to go to international fairs on design ‘comp shopping’ forays. For 20 years my job was to tap into new design trend: walking the floors of Paris, NY, Canton, Frankfurt, Milan and home turf UK design fairs in order to coherently barometer and table reports on new trend, and what’s happening in the industry.
It was my job coming out of very traditional training ground of a portraiture fine art degree at Camberwell School of Art, to become a trend development specialist, to take a view of the manufacturing design field globally and derive from this churning mass of fashion/home interiors activity, a core theme and deliver New Product Development.
These were specifically for manufacturers, importers and large retail groups – annual ranges that would out-last, and set new competitive trends based on the gamut of constant-flow, design DNA out there.
BIRTH OF THE PRO TREND PREDICTOR AND DEVELOPER
I was one of many such trend developers out in the field, and saw the rise of Indo-China Based factory design teams running amok, doing at first a pretty patchy job of low cost in-house product design.
But in just a few years these young talented creatives grew and overtook that area of design thrive and activity. What remained was a few of us who became makers or continued to strive for enrichment of the ore material of their own specific design product genre.
I did both.
I crafted and cheselled away at my core design drivers and areas of deep interests and worked hard perfecting the other counterpart of production and ever popular by-hand Sku delivery. Ironically I found my life’s work return to the tip of a clutch of fine, pointed sable brushes.
As a masterstroke signwriter and graphic typographer if found myself drawn back to now working not so much from the faces but to the facades of London. I was mixing paints in the winter cold and summer smog, alongside the new Shoreditch street artists and a capital breathing revival and a new raw creative agenda into ‘by-hand’ and digital creativity alike.
“Fashion you can buy, but style you possess. The key to style is learning who you are, which takes years. ” — Iris Apfel.
Graphic design fell into categories of sharp fashion right through the growing ranges into the historical archival alphabets which were birthed in deep antiquity (200 BC) to mid century and the birth of the more recognisable modern day brand design era (1905 – London Underground – Frank Pick influence).
These timeless ‘influencers’ literally shaped mine and many fine lettering artists lives.
Today those lives and shapes are presented here. Reflective, gracious, and time honoured… yet always convergent, dipped in freshness of the future, divergent, instinctive trends and styles.
Nick Garrett. NGS
DEPENDABLE MIX OF THE BEST FONTS AND IN-HOUSE aRCHIVAL LETTERING DESIGNS
French and Italian Typography flavours, mixed with our Stylish Classical London themes, and inspired vicinity Heritage Signs.
THE CLASSIC MIX
WE ARE LONDON LETTERING aRTISTS
(with a slice of Trad-Twist mix, NGS Soho Retro and NYC Boho panned in!)
HOT VINTAGE SIGNS
NOW SERVED
WITH A COOL MODERN TWIST...
Above: Interior Wall Signage | Gill Sans Light with Bold Drop Shadow | Bone white.
FONTS AREN’T TO BE TRUSTED
We never just take a font and jazz it..
we check all the fonts clients fwd our way, and balance them out.
We then hand-paint lettering – always carefully spaced and stylishly scaled.
Whether a rich old school cool vintage classic sign,
or fresh, new, joyful minimalist,
… a cute twist of both worlds.
Sign things are made differently here.
