Smith’s still creating signs of the times

JAN Juc signwriter Maree Smith just clocked up 40 years since she first started trade school at the Melbourne College of Decoration in 1982, where she learnt many of the skills she still applies to Surf Coast signage.

Working from her shed studio that is home to Patron Signs, an enterprise she started with her signwriting father, Ms Smith is increasingly finding she’s one of the few who still do specialised work like gold leaf writing on honour boards.

“Over the past 10 years I’m getting more referrals for that, they’re tracking me down a bit now.

“For years I did all the different real estate in the area, that was great, bread and butter consistent work… writing all the details by hand.

“We’d paint the background, sign write the logo – top and bottom – and then paint out the middle.”
Once sold the sign would come back and she’d sand back the enamel paint, roll out the middle of the board and re-write the next one.

With the introduction of computers in the early ’90s came vinyl cutters, and a great change to the way her trade was conducted, but it was not overnight.
“The first vinyl cutters to come out were the Gerber 4B, that must have been 1990, they were worth $40,000 then. It was just a keyboard with an LED screen, every font was $400, it came with Helvetica medium. So I didn’t buy one.”

Eventually the cost came down and she purchased a smaller machine for $14,000 in 1992 called the Letter Smith that could print 15mm high letters.

“I had that for a long time, and then it must have ’94 I got my first actual vinyl cutter… a Roland,” she said, adding that she she still uses it.
“They built things to last.”

Flicking through a photo album of her painted signs reveals a pictorial history of Surf Coast businesses, events and moments in time.

There’s several Bells Beach competition signs dating back to the ’80s, the old Surfworld sign that she later updated to say “The new Surfworld is Coming soon…”, a sign advertising the yet to be built Torquay Tropicana Motel, and another announcing that a Tuckerbag “Supermarket” would be completed by September 1985 on Gilbert Street with “eight specialty shops”.

Ms Smith admits to slowing a little these days – she no longer scales big ladders that was a module at trade school.

“Two extension ladders with a plank that wide [measuring a foot with her hands] with the iron grapplings and we had to get up a second story and sign write the brick wall, no railing, no harnesses. I’m still here.”

She is also realistic about the shift in signage costs between painted and printed: where once the materials were scarce and labour was cheap, the opposite is now true.

“You could compare it to buying your clothes at Kmart or having a beautifully cut suit. It just depends on what you’ve got, what you’re going to use it for.

“If you’re someone that doesn’t appreciate a beautifully cut suit, or can’t afford it, then you’ll go to Kmart.”Ms Smith flicking through her album of hand painted signs.