Hermetic Sign Co: Meet the man behind Margate’s unique shop signs

Hermetic Sign Co

After marveling at the sheer variety of artistic shop signs around Margate, we had to get an interview with the man himself. Hermetic Sign Co: the man behind some of Margate’s nicest, and quirkiest, shop fronts. 

You may have seen one of Andrew Hudson’s beautiful signs when walking through Margate town, he is responsible for the beautiful works of many shop fronts. Hermetic Sign Co produce traditional signwriting and hand-painted lettering, and CommunityAd caught up with Andrew to find out more about his incredible work.

When did you start sign writing?

Around a year and a half ago, while I was still commuting into London, I started doing little bits of signwork in my spare time. My boss was really good about it and let me go down to four days a week, and I gradually started to fill more and more of my Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays with signwriting. It quite quickly got to the point where I was struggling to keep up with the work and it was about this time last year I made the decision to go freelance and left my office job.

It was a little bit scary giving up the security of a regular pay-cheque for the uncertainty of freelancing, but it felt like it was moving in the right direction and the demand was there and I had really lost interest in my day job – I wasn’t enjoying it and found the commuting really difficult.

Has your background always been in Art?

I went to Art School (Wimbledon) in London and studied sculpture. I did toy with the idea of doing graphic design but went down the fine art route. I then ended up with a desk job doing spreadsheets for 15 years, but I had always harboured some sort of notion that I would come back and return to creative work at some point. Amazingly Margate has allowed me to do that.

Has it helped to have social media for your work?

Yes, definitely! I haven’t really done any promotion, it’s just been word-of-mouth and Instagram, that’s my only platform other than people seeing my work in the street. That’s another thing that has been amazing, you feel a continuity with the history of the craft and the area that you are fitting into something bigger than just yourself and your own work. It’s amazing to think how many other beautiful traditional signs are hiding behind the more recent plastic fascias. To feel like I am fitting into that community history is really fulfilling.

How long have you been in Margate?

I have been here two years now and I guess I’m almost starting to feel like a bit of a local! I had been looking to move out of London for a while, I was sick of paying silly rent. Initially I was looking in Hastings then a friend I used to work with moved down here, so I came down and looked at a few places and thought yeah let’s do it.

What was the first job you had in Thanet?

The mural by the sea was the big one – ‘People Like You Love’ for last year’s Margate Pride. A local company was looking for someone to hand paint that artwork for the Mural and when I got that job it was quite a big commitment and I was still working in London at the time so I had to book holiday in order to commit to the job. When you are able to see your work out in the open it’s so much more fulfilling than sitting at a desk all day so I decided then to go for it and hand in my notice.

What has been your favourite project?

They are all great but if I had to pick a favourite then it would be the Joseph Wales one. That turned into a real labour of love because of the history of the building. Joseph Wales was a sign writer who set up shop in that building in 1912 and installed an amazing gilded glass fascia and there I am 100 plus years later going back and signwriting on the same building. The sign was covered up for a lot of the 20th Century, but it was uncovered again recently and 100 years later a lot of the gold leaf is as bright and crisp today as it would have been when it was first made.

What was your own inspiration growing up in this creative field?

A combination of things, I was always academic at school but in my mid-teens I had a creative awakening and decided to go down the art route, I got into punk and heavy metal and so there’s the influence there of the band logos and that kind of typography. I was always copying my favourite band logos in my sketchbook at school so my inspiration has been partly heavy metal and skateboard graphics and partly pubs. I just love a proper old school boozer with all the great signage and ornate Victorian mirrors. Pubs are such an amazing resource for typography and signage and branding, packaging and layout design.

Where does the name Hermetic come from?  

Hermetic has a couple of references, there was a guy supposedly in ancient Egypt who was thought to be the author of these texts about alchemy and geometry and his name was Hermes Trismegistus. In mythology Hermes was responsible for the alphabet, letters and writing – he was the messenger – so I liked the connection with signs and lettering it in that way, but I also quite like the air of mystery around it with its kind of pseudo-occult references.

 

What are your hobbies away from signwriting? 

I like music and like going to gigs, I used to play bass in a heavy metal band. There’s a group up at Radio Margate that do an improvised jam session so I might have to go down there and lay down a few licks! I like going to pubs – I am a big fan of the darts and I usually go to the Wig and Pen for a game most weeks. I love a good rummage in a charity shop for hidden gems. Margate is having an amazing time at the moment, with so many people doing their own thing, whether that’s painting or music or setting up a small business, and I’m incredibly grateful to the people and the town and the community for encouraging and supporting what I do!

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Fancy reading our interview with the owner of Kill Me Now, who Hermetic did the signing for?  https://www.communityad.co.uk/new-gallery-opens-margate-talk-owner-killmenow/

 

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