Teaching Traditional Signwriting to BA Graphic Design & Illustration Students

Recently, I was invited to deliver two half-day workshops in traditional signwriting to Year 2 and Year 3 students studying BA (Hons) Graphic Design & Illustration at University Centre South Essex.

The sessions were run as additional workshops within the course structure. Attendance was required, but the focus was very clear from the outset: this was not about style, speed, or producing polished outcomes. It was about introducing a traditional craft through process, constraint, and fundamentals.

Each session worked with a small cohort of 11 students, allowing the teaching to remain hands-on, deliberate, and closely observed.

Why Traditional Signwriting in a Contemporary Design Course?

Traditional signwriting sits at an interesting intersection within graphic design education. It strips typography back to its physical origins: stroke, weight, spacing, rhythm, and control. There is no undo button, no grid snapping, and no shortcut to consistency.

For students used to working digitally, this shift is often revealing. Letterforms are no longer shapes to be arranged, but actions to be executed. That difference alone reframes how typography is understood.

A Deliberately Limited Setup

Both Year 2 and Year 3 groups followed the same process and exercises. The intention was not to accelerate one group beyond the other, but to observe how different levels of design experience responded to the same constraints.

Each student worked with:

• One brush only

• One paint colour

• A mahl stick and palette

• A flat working surface

We began with vertical and angled strokes before introducing a very limited range of casual-style letters in the second half of the session.

The choice of casual letters was intentional. Their curved entry and exit points allow students to focus on brush movement, pressure, and control without the added complexity of sharp corners or tight joins. Serif and block letterforms were deliberately excluded. Their intricacies demand a level of control that would have been unrealistic within a half-day introduction.

Advanced techniques and broader stylistic considerations were also left out. Managing expectations was as important as managing the exercises.

Where Students Struggled (and Why That Matters)

Across both groups, the same challenges emerged early on.

The first was paint consistency. Understanding when paint is ready to use, not too thick, not too thin, is something that resists explanation. It has to be seen, demonstrated, adjusted, and corrected in real time. This alone reinforced the value of in-person teaching over purely online instruction.

The second challenge was brush control and patience. Students were keen to move quickly towards recognisable letterforms, but progress depended on slowing down and paying attention to the make-up of each stroke: the angle of the pull, the shape of the brush, and how letters are built rather than drawn.

One of the key moments in both workshops came when students began to see letters not as outlines, but as a sequence of deliberate movements. That shift, from seeing letters as shapes to understanding them as actions, is often where traditional signwriting starts to click.

Outcomes and Engagement

By the end of each half-day session, every student was able to produce several different words in a casual signwriting style. More importantly, they had a clearer understanding of why consistency is difficult to achieve and what needs to happen before style can develop.

What stood out most was the level of engagement. Despite these sessions sitting within an already busy academic week, focus remained high throughout.

One Year 3 student summed it up particularly well:

“We were a bit stressed this week because we had a deadline coming up and thought this workshop might take up important time, but it actually took our minds off it. It was nice to concentrate on something else for a while.”

That response speaks to something broader. Working slowly, physically, and with constraint can be both challenging and grounding in a design education environment that often prioritises speed and output.

Looking Ahead

These sessions mark the beginning of my teaching work in traditional signwriting. The methods used here, focusing on fundamentals, constraint, and process, will form the basis of upcoming workshops that will be open to a wider audience beyond the university setting.

Traditional signwriting remains a demanding craft, but its lessons extend far beyond lettering alone. Control, patience, and attention to process are skills that translate directly back into contemporary design practice.

My thanks to Steve Page, Programme Leader for BA (Hons) Graphic Design & Illustration, and to the students at University Centre South Essex for their focus and openness throughout both sessions.