Brighton based Recreative Signs specialises in the creative application of coloured materials. The results, are amazing…

Richard Earley is as switched-on as the best of us in knowing what’s out there in the deeper reserves of exotic wide-format printing hardware, but despite that, he’s doing his best to position himself, and his company, Recreative Signs, as a player in a niche he’s making his own. Let’s think of him as a ‘traditional computerised signs and graphics producer.’

Computerised signmaking has been around long enough now to see its founding epoch being succeeded by the age of digital wide format print. Fair to say that most signmakers these days have an inkjet on the premises. That wasn’t always the case. At one time, if you were a computer-equipped signmaker, all you’d have had, in terms of tech, was a plotter capable of cutting self-adhesive vinyl. Look as carefully as you like around Recreative Signs, and that’s all you’ll find now - a cutting plotter. That and a considerable stock of Metamark 7 Series Coloured SignVinyl.

As we said last time we visited Richard, Metamark’s mission amounts to supplying its products on a basis that gives customers high confidence in both availability and the service that ensures what’s ordered is supplied on time. To deliver that mission, Metamark keeps some of the largest stocks in the industry. Recreative Signs runs us a close second. Brighton based Recreative Signs typically keeps about sixty Metamark 7 Series colours on the shelves.

That changed recently.

To undertake a rather special job under consideration, Recreative Signs made room for every single colour in the hefty Metamark 7 Series brick swatch, and then used each and every colour in a single job! We’ve reported some wildly creative work undertaken by our customers in the past but here we’re offering, in good faith, that this is the only job that uses every colour in the Metamark 7 Series range. If you know different, please, speak up!

There’s no shortage of high-octane creativity at Recreative Signs but you’d struggle to find a customer looking to involve every SignVinyl colour known to man in a single piece of output. Not challenged, Richard decided to produce a bumper graphic for his own vehicle featuring all the colours.

It’s fair to say that managing the pre-cutting phase, the design, the cutting weeding and assembly of such a design demands a few buffs. An eye for colour helps, so too does a micro-surgeon’s skills when weeding and assembling the image. Richard prevailed so can plainly claim those skills and then some.

The image is a bird reduced to bordered patches of colour. It’s all arranged ‘correctly.’ It’s very involving too. A lay person will look at it and admire the depth of the colour and the ‘beyond-print-pop’ you only get with SignVinyl. Someone of ordinary skill in the signmakers’ arts will look closer though and see there’s something a bit special going on. To be clear, the work is arguably a proxy for the Metamark 7 Series Swatch, because every colour in the swatch is there in the single job.

It’s tempting to think of Recreative Signs’ amazing piece of self-promotion as a ‘sampler’ or a means of challenging a skill. We see it differently. We think the work illuminates the capability of an obviously creative team on the one hand, and the potential of its medium on the other. It demonstrates that some amazing creative feats are possible. It’s inspiring.

We’re delighted that our 7 Series Swatch and its contents inspired Recreative Signs. In turn, Recreative Signs has inspired us. Read on.

Our colours have stories to tell. Give them all voice though and they shout so loud none gets heard. We’ll be bringing some individual colours into the spotlight in the coming weeks and months and sharing their back-stories and what qualifies them for inclusion. There’s more to colour than meets the eye.

The last word belongs to the first name in SignVinyl exponents, Recreative Signs. Thank you. We’ve never seen anything like this before, but we’ve a feeling you may have started something.