For my latest project I have been building a temporary Signpost with attached signs for a Urban Food Festival Opening tomorrow at Canary Wharf for a few days.

The customer wanted a modern urban style sign based upon those tourist signs you see at destinations pointing out how far it is to New York and Tokyo. It needed to be modern, free standing on a solid floor, installed in a couple of hours without mechanical handling, and removed several days later without trace.

As you can see at the bottom we ended up manufacturing a lattice steel work post with brightly coloured signs at the top in bright modern colours.

The hardest part was specifying the wording for the signs. The customer wanted the option to reuse the structure at some point in the future, so the lettering is vinyl letters which can be peeled off at the end of this week, and replaced with something new next time. Ordering the  vinyl lettering is the bit that took the time if you make a spelling mistake no matter how good the structure, how bright the paint, the spelling mistake is the only bit people will remember.

I was reminded of a friend of mine whose job it is to arrange balloons, confetti, glitter etc to blow up or  fall down at the end of concerts. Who would have thought you could make a living doing that. Many years ago he was contracted at a very well known London Concert Venue to do a balloon drop at the end of a concert by the 1980s band Soul to Soul. The balloons with the bands name printed on had been supplied by the promoter, inflated by a balloon decorating company, my friends job was just to rig the mechanism to drop them down onto 5000 people. He was just about to press the button at the end of the concert when he noticed the balloons had “Sole 2 Sole” printed on – What do you do…….?